I love Rock Band. I think its one of the best games out there on any system.
I always wanted to play the drums and now I (sorta) can. Problem being, medium and hard have gotten a bit too easy in most cases. So I decided to try expert.

Well I must suck at life cuz I just can't hit all those kicks. They are so fast and they tire me out before the song is even half over. So I was sitting there thinking man it would be great if there were two pedals like a lot of real life drums. Then I could hit all the kicks and not get so tired.

Now, I like to consider myself a not so sucky amature modder so the first thing I thought of was- Hey why the hell not!?

I first set out to find a second bass pedal. After searching the interwebz I found that there were plenty of replacement and accessories to the part the foot actually makes contact with (thanks to the first gen of them all breaking so easily) but not many replacement pedals. I eventually found one with decent customer reviews and it was conveniently being carried by the Best Buy a block away. So I went down there and dropped the 20 bucks. It was decently made and came with some composite sticks with a little more heft to them and some nifty drum pad silencers.

Then I checked out the connectors that plug into the drums from the bass pedal. They looked a lot like headphone jacks so I grabbed a pair and compared them side by side. The headphones have three connection points and the drums only two. Other than that they were identical so I picked up a two dollar headphone y-splitter and plugged both pedals into it and then the splitter to my drums. Ya know it actually worked.

But it wasn't perfect. When drumming it is more comfortable to leave your foot down and then lift it just before a bass kick and then drop it on the kick. So if you are using two pedals that means both feet are pressing down on the pedals and then when its time to kick you lift one, then drop it for the kick. The whole time the other foot is still holding down the other pedal. The problem is that if a pedal is held down, when its time for the other to kick, the game just knows its getting a constant input of "hey the pedal is still held" and when you push the other, it still is being held. So the pedal you push to hit the note doesn't register.

One fix is to lift your foot off of the pedal except when you intend to hit a note. But that's more tiring when you have to hold both feet in the air. So a friend of mine suggested using diodes on the splitter to single out the negative and intercept the positive. I was skeptical because the negative will still pass and still tell the game that I am holding it down but I let him try it. Well I was right and it didn't work. But there's one more option that should work just fine.

Get a couple of "flashers" like the controllers that tell your turn signal in a car to be on then off except with the drums there won't be a second device telling it to be on again so it won't blink on and off and kick over and over like a car's turn signal blinks over and over. It will just turn on then immediately off again for the next pedal to be used.

The new plan is to grab a couple of those, hook them up to a 12 volt power supply and have the splitter pass though them before getting to the drums. This way I don't mod the actual pedals or the actual drums and risk destroying them. Also, from the experience we have had with said "flashers" even though they technically require a 12 volt power source, turns out you can get away with a 9 volt battery.

I will build a small enclosure to house the flashers and batteries and then just hook it all together and cross my fingers. I will definitely be updating this with the results as early as tomorrow but as late as next weekend. Depends on when I can pick up the flashers.

This is so much fulll of awesome. I mean, seriously. Try Maps on expert. That kills my leg...

I never would have thought of the phone addapter thing. I mean, now I see exactly how it works. an RJ-11 reguardless of it's wire layout will still connect the same way even using an addapter. So much kudos for that.

I look forward to seeing this completed.

Forgive any mistakes in this post as I am at work and using my phone to reply. I just wanted to say that yes this is indeed full of awesome and that I think I should be a little clearer about something. The headphone jack and splitter I mentioned were the kind for a cd player or mp3 player. Just regular earbud headphones. But now I have to ask/ is it different on the PS3/ I mean the plug in for the bass pedal to the drums.

Actually, I got my cables confused. It was the drum set that had the 8th inch audio cable and the Guitar Hero guitars that had the RJ-11... so yeah, that was my bad. The PS3 bass petal uses standard audio cabling just like the 360.

I just picked up the plug that the 9-volts will be plugged into. Now I just gotta get a hold of my buddy that has the flashers. I am still scrapping around looking for something that will fit it all and look nice for the housing.

Oh and its good to know that the RB drums are the same on all systems. That means if this works you can get a second pedal as well.

Go to radio shack, they have things called projects boxes/enclosures. All different sizes and are ment for just such occasions. They are pitch black and would probably blend in to the drumset nicely.

And to ShadowFox or Genji or anyone else who likes to make Radio Shack jokes at me... f*ck you, kind sirs.

Anyway, I was looking for images of said box and found this http://nestable.classicgaming.gamespy.c ... _old.shtml which turned out to be much more awesome than intended. But these boxes come in much smaller sizes too... so yeah.

Sweet thats the kinda thing I need. Thanks.

well its been about a week and still no word from that friend of mine with the parts. He is going through some serious times so I won't be pressuring him to help until he needs a distraction. So for now its on hold.

My friend went into a bit of a spiral... so yeah.

Anywho, Rock Band heard about my troubles and did the work for me.
Here's pics of the new pedal and splitter.




The splitter takes 2 AAA batteries.

There's a thread on Rockband.com here: http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=126439

According to posters in that thread and the diagram in the last image, it works on all RB drums/games on all platforms.

$25-$30 at GameStop. I am buying one next payday.

thats some crazy modding.

A friend of mine brought Guitar Hero over... the new one. It had two 1/8 in audio jacks built in, one beside the other. I got my RB pedal and plugged it in, and I'll be damned if it didn't work. No modding required. I got to give GH props for that.

Yeah but two friends of mine with the GHWT drums already broke them so it goes back down in my book.

Dyne just bought that kit I showed and it works wonderfully. We are using it right now. I definitely going to get it.