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I bought a peace manhattan kit, and it was great and all.. but i really preferred the look of a "real" cocktail drum. so i took everything apart, unwrapped the shells.. stuck them together, REwrapped them in a green glass-glitter wrap i got from www.drummaker.com.. rewrapped the little tom the set came with, and bought a yamaha "sopranino" side snare.

I just made a snare fan for the top head of the main drum, so this photo shows just the cocktail drum itself. the tom and snare are not attached.

the yamaha snare came with a mount similar to the mounts on their club jordan kits. so i bought ANOTHER one of the same type of mounts and replaced the virtually worthless mount on the included peace 10" tom. i bought two cowbell L-brackets to mount the drums. i cut down the high hat arm that came with the peace set, and mounted the hi-hat holding portion of it to a piece of 1/4" steel stock.. or is it 3/8"s? whatever size. i cut the remainder of the arm down pretty small, and mounted the elbow-joint-thing on the end of that (which is what is holding the 8" splash). i'll take more photos of everything once my camera stops being so dumb.

for a finishing touch, i stuck a gremlin emblem on the front of the drum (that i kept from my old 1971 AMC gremlin). here's a picture of that..

I think that about covers it. i'm 24 and in a synth-pop band called roarbot which i write all the music for in addition to playing guitar and singing. there's some songs available for listening at www.cookievolcano.com (click on the roarbot button, and head for the sounds page. they're streaming mp3s, so they're a litle fuzzy sounding) the peace manhattan kit was the first "drum set" i had ever bought, and this is the first work i've ever done to any sort of drums. not too shabby, i don't think.

more photos.

another shot from the front, with the tom and snare attached. the snare isn't wrapped (i didn't have enough), but i kind of like it natural. the finish is nice on it, and it's a nice contrast to the rest of the set.

from the back. same deal.

from above.

the hi-hat arm that i built using the top of the peace one, firmly affixed to a piece of steel stock. it's a litle ugly, but it gets the job done for now until i feel like getting a pretty one.

the splash cymbal arm using the L-arm that came with the peace set, and the remainder of the hi-hat arm cut down to be short, and bent to an appropriate angle. i swung the arm out so you could see.. i don't play it like that. though i'm sure the fine folks at peace would think that it's at a wonderful and comfortable angle.

speaking of wonderful and comfortable angles. fellow peace owners, what is the deal with the supplied cymbal arms and tom-mounting bar? i'm assuming peace has no R&D department. then again, they are awfully in-expensive.

anyway. hope this gives some other peace manhattan owners some ideas.

-jason