Kids Drumset Conversion

I've been gigging with this little kit for over a year now and have modified and upgraded as I went along. Originally, I had a PDP (adult) kit that was given to me for free. I refinished it and converted the floor tom into a bass drum for a while before finding a little kids bass drum and tom on Facebook Marketplace. In other words, half of the drum set I use is from a childs kid, and half is from an adults kit. I've also turned a 13 inch tom into a floor tom, which was a really simple and fun process. All together the sizes for the kit are

10 inch high tom

13 inch floor tom

14 inch snare drum

16 inch bass drum

Here's what the kit looked like when I bought it

The Bass Drum

The first step was to take off all of the hardware and remove the black wrap. It usually just comes off when you pry a screwdriver or something flat into the overlapping part where the glue is, but you may have to heat it up with a blow dryer for a few minutes. After you take it off, it'll look something like this

After removing the hardware, I grabbed some Goo Gone and scraped the residual adhesive off before sanding the drum with a medium and fine grit. (PLEASE NOTE: This turned my drum a little bit...orange. Luckily, I was using an orange stain so it didn't matter!)

After that, just stain with whatever stain you like, maybe add a wipe on poly (the best imo for drumsets, so easy to use) and then put all the hardware back on with some new heads and you'll be greeted with a happy little drum

Lifting It Up

Now, you still have a drum that's only 16 inches tall so you'll need to lift it somehow. I've used a homemade riser in the past made from wood and some long threads and a few odds and ends

With a little tweaking it may have been perfect but it really wobbled too much for me and the bass drum pedal would rub against the drums rim a lot. After a while, I really wanted an upgrade so I bought a few things from a website called DrumFactoryDirect.com

Here's the links to the items I used

1. "Bass Drum" Legs https://www.drumfactorydirect.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=8264

2. Wooden Hoop https://www.drumfactorydirect.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=8424

3. Bass Drum Riser https://www.drumfactorydirect.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_105_359&products_id=3836

And Voila! The cutest little bass drum ya ever did see! Ignore the fact that I could only afford one wood hoop, you're allowed to buy two. I promise.

The "Floor Tom"

As I said, I converted a hanging tom (13 inches) into a floor tom by drilling mounts into the shell. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the conversion, but it was essentially the same process as the bass drum.

The High Tom

For the highest drum, the process was super simple. All I did was take the hardware off, stain it, and add new heads. The tom came with a mount that goes into the bass drum which may have worked after the conversion, but I decided to just use a cymbal clamp like this

So there you have it! A great little kit made from odds and ends that aren't very hard to acquire. If I started from scratch I might buy a 14 inch tom on ebay, a kids kit with a bass drum and tom, and use my favorite snare (doesn't have to match) on the gig. It should be noted that this kit now has mesh heads on it and is my apartment practice kit. Here's a short clip of how it sounds:

Big thanks to http://compactdrums.com/ for all of the knowledge and inspiration! Check those guys out, there's a ton of information about converting kids, wrapping your drums, and much more.

Thanks for reading!