As you move from medium to hard to expert Rock Band drumming, you might notice that kick pedal usage goes up. Way up. Single kicks become double kicks become triple kicks, and “missing” kick notes suddenly materialize all over the place in songs.

To deal with lots of kick pedal action in songs, real drumsets often have more than one kick pedal:

Through some clever hackery, it’s possible to set up dual kick pedal action for Rock Band drumsets as well.

I frown on this type of mod because it deviates significantly from the default Rock Band drumset — learning to play well with this mutant two pedal drumset will absolutely ruin you when you sit down on a stock Rock Band drumset.

Still, it is cool, and it does highlight the absurdity of playing those songs with crazy amounts of kick drum with only a single pedal.

In my neverending quest to reduce Rock Band drum noise to an absolute minimum, I experimented with padding the inside of the drum heads.

Here’s how I did it. First, I popped off the drum head. This may take some effort depending on which kind of drum kit you have — EL drum heads come right off, whereas the QM drum heads take a bit more force. But if you’re careful you won’t hurt anything. Give em’ a tug and see what’s under there!

My main drum set is a QM, and the bottom looks like this with the top removed.

Lots of areas for sound to resonate and bounce around inside that drum. Let’s fix that!

I then took a little bit of thin fleece fabric that I had, cut it into small strips, rolled it up and placed it wherever I could inside the drum head. Now that I’m looking at this picture, I think it’s safe to put fabric all along the bottom of the drum, too.

I did the same on the top, but there’s not a lot of room between the foam and the sensors.

I added the same sort of padding to each drum — red, yellow, blue, and green.

That’s a QM drum set. An EL drum set is quite different internally, but the theory of padding is the same. If you want to see how to add padding to an EL drum set, I found a set of pictures on the ScoreHero Rock Band hardware forum:

The results are pretty modest. There’s a mild reduction in the hollow, resonating “thunk” sound you get from hitting an empty plastic container.

If you really want to reduce the noise of your Rock Band drumset, start with those gum rubber or neoprene drum covers. They are extremely effective.

Still, adding a bit of padding to the interior of the drums is cheap and easy, and it does reduce the rock band drum noise a little more… I’ll take all the noise reduction I can get!

Now this is a brilliant mod — small PVC drum support struts!

I saw these on eBay and I immediately bought some. Here’s a picture of my new Rock Band drum support struts in place:

Why is this so brilliant? Any Rock Band drummer quickly learns that the red and green pads don’t behave quite like the yellow and blue pads.

The yellow and blue drums are supported by the legs on the drumset, whereas the red and green drums are literally hanging on by a small plastic hinge! This can lead to unfortunate things like the drums literally snapping off. (It’s rare; I can only imagine the force with which these guys and gals are drumming.)

The lack of support for the red and green drum heads also means they shake and vibrate more than they should when hit with the drumstick, which can interfere with normal drumming. There are times I know I’ve hit the red pad and the hit just didn’t register. It’s on the order of one hit out of hundreds, but it’s still frustrating.

I always suspected this had to do with the vibration of the red drum, but it never occurred to me how much a simple support strut extending out from the drum base could help! See for yourself:

Consider how often you’re drumming against the red drum (seriously, that thing is getting a major beatdown in almost every song), and how loosely supported it is. The difference in performance with the strut in place is like night and day. It has completely eliminated those rare ghost hits on the red pad that I was experiencing.

It’s not cheap at $20 plus shipping, but the quality of these handmade items is solid; there are little felt pads on each end to protect your drumset, and they’re painted black to blend in with your drum kit. They’re also super easy to put on and take off, so it’s an eminently reversible mod. If you have the time, and want to save a few bucks, you can make your own, too. There’s a great walkthrough on building your own PVC support struts at ScoreHero.

I hope Harmonix is listening. These red and green drum struts should be built into the next edition of the Rock Band drums!

The most important Rock Band Drum mod, in my opinion, is definitely putting neoprene or gum rubber covers on the drum. But the second most important Rock Band Drum mod is a big one, too — reinforce the bass drum pedal.

The bass drum pedal is often the “weakest link” of the drum kit; it tends to crack or even snap in two under heavy, prolonged use. It probably doesn’t help that as you move from Hard to Expert, the amount of bass drum goes up dramatically — double kicks turn into triple kicks all over the place.

Play Rock Band drums long and hard enough, and you’re likely to end up with a broken drum pedal!

The current theory is that the pedal, since it’s made of plastic, flexes when you depress it with your foot. There are rubber stoppers at the top of the pedal to prevent the pedal from hitting the plastic base, but there are no stoppers lower down on the pedal. As a result the pedal can flex because it’s hitting the base unevenly. After enough frantic foot pounding, it’ll inevitably crack at the flex point.

One cheap way to prevent cracking is to add some additional rubber stoppers to the bottom of the pedal so the pedal presses down evenly across the entire base — and has no opportunity to flex when you stomp on it. Your local hardware store has rubber stoppers of various types, or you can make your own out of balled-up duct tape. Improvise, but make sure the pedal is supported evenly against the base when pressed down hard by your foot.

If you’re willing to spend 20 bucks to get a cooler looking pedal, and fix the flex issue at the same time, you can buy an aftermarket pedal reinforcement made of sturdier material. The most inexpensive one ($14.99) I’ve found is the Pedal Metal. It comes in a variety of styles and colors, but they’re all essentially the same thing: a thin aluminum reinforcement plate that you attach to the top of your pedal. It’s very easy to install — just hold it in place and press down firmly as you screw down the self-tapping screws.

As you can see if I turn the pedal over, the self-tapping screws go through the pedal and poke out a bit. I have since removed the two middle lower screws (out of eight) because they came too close to the base. The rest of the screws don’t even come close to hitting the base when the pedal is depressed. I figure if six screws won’t hold it on there, I’ve got bigger problems.

There are actually two versions of the Rock Band drum pedal, but it’s very difficult to tell them apart. My pedal (above) is a V1. From what I read, the V2 pedal has these changes over the V1 pedal.

• thicker hinge pin
• two extra reinforcement ribs in the bottom of the pedal
• orange pedal guide has the front magnet location moved downward
• the screws for the sensor enclosure in the base of the pedal are no longer covered by rubber feet

Pretty minor tweaks, all, compared to the major differences between the drum versions.

Some people drum for months without ever breaking or even cracking their Rock Band drum pedal. But it never hurts to be careful, so if you’re a serious drummer, I recommend putting additional rubber stoppers on the base of the pedal, or looking into aftermarket Rock Band pedal reinforcement solutions.

Most fake plastic rockers don’t know this, but the Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitars will accept standard issue guitar straps. The strap pegs are almost the same size and position as a real guitar. You can walk into any guitar store, pick out a custom guitar strap, and use it on your fake plastic guitar.

There are lots of excellent guitar strap choices at Guitar Center. I like the Dunlop Lucky 13 brand of guitar straps so much, I’ve collected all five (well, actually six but who’s counting) models.

• Buy Dunlop Lucky 13 guitar straps on Amazon
• Buy Dunlop Lucky 13 guitar straps on eBay

Boring black guitar straps suck. A cool custom guitar strap is one of the easiest ways to customize your fake plastic guitar and make it even more rocktacular!