ii) Putting it Together.

Put the foam sandwich back into the pad, put the rim back on and screw it back together. Now take that inline RCA jack and solder it to the wire that you feed through the holes. Red is the soldered on the center pin and black is on the outside ground pin. Ta-dah, that is it, all done.

Now of course, you will need to repeat this five times. However, I am sure it is not quite the same thing if you sit on the floor playing Drummania. Yes, you need stand to mount all these pads so they can make it feel like the arcade.

Again, people on the net have been very creative and resourceful when they built their drum sets. Some people use wood, some people use metal, some people just place them on top of books or bricks. The easiest to work with and cheapest thing I found is PVC piping for plumbing. It is plentiful, you can find it most hardware stores like Home Depot in super long lengths; it is easy to cut, I was lazy and use a jig saw on it; versetile, it has premade angles for connectors; and cheap, 50 cents a foot.

Ok, we have the materials planned out, now we need measurements. Well, that is easy, just go to the arcade with a tape measure and measure it out. Of course, the arcade guy will look at you funny and probably kick you out for wasting his time, but if you are a good customer who plays a lot of games then I am sure he won't mind a few measurements.

i) Ok, I went to the arcade and measured it all out. Here are my kinda messy diagrams.

ii) Anyway, here is how I did it with these measurements 

And  I did this by using a drill to punch through the PVC. I used 3" eye bolts, wing nuts and washers to secure the drum pad to the PVC, since there is already a screw threaded hole on the bottom of the drum pad. The reason I used eye bolts over regular bolts and regular nuts is that with these fasteners, you can assemble and take this drum set up apart without the need to use pliers or a wrench.

Ok, now the cross pieces are done.

 From this diagram, you can see that will need 2x 90 angles, 1x 45 angle, 2x 90 T-connectors, and 1x 45 T-connector.

 Again, I found this connector for PVC pipes in the plumbing department. It basically allows you to connect 2 pipes together by basically tightening a threaded pipe ring. Perfect! So, I basically added a little more joiners to add these connectors to the bars and there you go, you can now take these bars apart at will.

So, here is my drum set up in the store almost ready to go.

When you look in the manual of Drummania, it says it will take Midi Drums. In the arcade, it says the machine is powered by Yamaha. Ok. this is a big hint. Ok, with a bit of research, I found that Drummania is built using a Yamaha drum set namely the DTX line of drums. Now, if you ever go to a music store like Tom Lee's you will quickly see that a DTX set will easily cost you in the $1000 dollar range.

Ok, before you get scared away, lets look at this a little more closely. First of all, the DTX drum set is made up of the drums, the stand and the processor (oh yea, a twirly stool). Well, ok, we just built the drums and the stand, and well, I am sure I can do without an expensive stool with the Yamaha name on it. So what do we have left? the electronic brain of it all, the DTX drum machine. Now the one used in the arcade machines are basically a Yamaha DTX 2.0 drum machine.

So I went on the most obvious place when looking for obscure junk, EBAY. Sure enough, there are lots of auctions selling these DTX units, most of them are new ones and expensive ones. But patience pays off when I found a DTX 2.0 from a guy from Germany, $200 USD. Hey, it was in great shape, and customs let it right through, probably because they couldn't decipher the customs slip. The only problem with it was it had a German power adapter. No big deal, it is just a simple 12Volt 1200mA negative tip AC power adapter. You can get these at Radio Shack if you are desperate.

Alright, now we got the drum machine. Now, computers usually plug into these machines through MIDI adapters usually through sound cards. But we are dealing with a Playstation 2 which doesn't have ports for sound cards. Instead, what the PS2 will do, is it will take the MIDI input through its USB ports.

Ok, the more technical crap. As I commented earlier, I tried the USB MIDISport converter but it didn't work. I am not sure why, I fiddled with settings here and there but I couldn't get it work so I returned it. I got the Yamaha unit, plugged it in and it was already working.

As to the other concern, can you use another drum machine? Yes. maybe. The DTX 2.0 needs to be set to a MIDI program. Fortunately, there are lots of pre-configured one already in the memory of the DTX. The one the manual says to go to and use is number 56, which is refered to on the manual as "GENERAL MIDI Standard 1". Now, I am sure most of the other drum machines out there probably also have built in MIDI programs in memory. The trick is to figure out which one is the same or close enough to being the same as the DTX's specs as shown in the picture. So, if you are out there, start with one and just go through experimenting. It might take a while so have at it...

Yea, you are right. I usually play Autobass in the arcade so I don't use the foot all that much. But yes, you can get just about anything thing that switches to be a foot pedal, tape recorder switch, piano or organ pedals. Now, I wanted the real feel of a foot pedal so, that is what I did, I got a real drum foot pedal. I went back on EBAY and searched for an old used but still working foot pedal. Found an old Singer one for $10 USD.

Now, I didn't fully hook this up since I don't really use foot anyway but I am sure you can figure out how to wire this to the DTX. I think the best way is to use metal foil to wrap around the hammer and some wood to build a whack plate and some wire to connect and make the connector.