ION Drum Rocker: Death of the Blue Pad

[Rakula]

A few minutes ago, I was playing on my ION Drum Rocker, then all of a sudden blue hits weren't registering. I went into freestyle mode and tried different cables, but it still didn't register. Looks like the blue pad is dead.

Is this a common occurrence with ION pads? Does anyone know how I would go about fixing it or if it is even possible to fix? I've had the ION kit for several months now, and their customer service is terrible, so I don't think contacting them will achieve anything.

Will the mesh head mod fix it, or will I likely have to do something else?

Thanks.

[HellishFiend]

Ion pads are super easy to work on. Just get the right size allen wrench, open it up, and have a looksee to find out what's wrong.

[Rakula]

That's the plan. Had a look around the house, but could only find allen wrenches that were too big or too small. I'll go down to the hardware store tomorrow so I can open it up. Just thought I might as well ask in the meantime if there's a known fix or something.

[HellishFiend]

It's hard to say without looking at it. If it wont register at all, my guess is that a wire or solder joint snapped. Both are pretty easy fixes.

[davidshek]

It's hard to say without looking at it. If it wont register at all, my guess is that a wire or solder joint snapped. Both are pretty easy fixes.

That'd be my guess as well. Electronically, these things are pretty simple, just a simple piezo transducer wired directly to a 1/4" mono jack.

I believe it's a 5/8" hex key (AKA "allen wrench") that you need for the Ion pads.

EDIT: Correction, it's not 5/8", it's 3/16".

[thirdmortal]

I had this same problem, and when i opened the drum pad I found they used something like 26 gauge wire. the wire is almost hair thin and just snapped from the constant vibration. I re-soldered all of the heads with heavier gauge wire and haven't had any issues since.

[animemetalhead]

Another thing to make sure you do is rotate your pads. If you're using the cymbals frequently, the red and blue pads are going to take the most beating, so rotate them with the yellow and greens to make sure they all wear evenly.

[Nostri1s]

I believe it's a 5/8" hex key (AKA "allen wrench") that you need for the Ion pads.

Actually I believe it's a metric size that they use.

[davidshek]

Actually I believe it's a metric size that they use.

A 3/16" hex key works perfectly, I've done it many times myself. But if you choose to use metric, you can use a 5mm key too.

[tuaca620]

It is a 5mm allen wrench 16mm is rather large for this type of application