Making some upgrades

Special Edition Super Long Post With Pictures today!  But first, a brief intro.  I have known for some time now that a stock RB drum set wasn't going to be good enough.  It's fun, of course, but I wanted to simulate the experience of drumming a little more closely.  So I did what any reasonable person would do - I bought an electronic drum kit that I could hook up to Rock Band.  After doing some bargain shopping on ebay, the packages arrived:

First I opened the smaller box that contained my kick pedals.  It's a double pedal, but I don't imagine I'll be using the left one any time soon.  Some assembly required, it seems...

Next I opened the big box, and the first thing I noticed was DEAR GOD THAT'S A LOT OF CABLES:

After my cablephobia subsided, I started pulling things out of the box.  Below the frame you can see the hi-hat pedal, the kick trigger, a couple of cymbal mounts, and above them the drum brain:

But we can't forget the pads!  Laid out on my couch you can see the three small pads for toms, the big white pad for the snare, a smaller hi-hat cymbal, two big cymbals (crash and ride), and the massive nest of cables:

So I started assembling everything and noticed something peculiar - the bolts that held the frame together had a square head.  But then, a flash of inspiration - I took the bit out of my screwdriver, and it worked perfectly:

Then I hit a bit of trouble - I realized everything was on the wrong side!  Whoever I bought it from must've been a lefty.  You can see in the picture below, the small snare arm and the hi-hat connector are both on the right side instead of the left.  I checked online to make sure that my assumption was correct:

Yep, it was on the wrong side all right.  So I took off the top cross-frame-piece-thingy and moved some things around.  I then started attaching some pads and eventually got things how I wanted them.  I then put my kick pedals in place, as seen below:

The final piece was a great adapter box made by Doc at Doc's Rockband Mods (those guys are amazing).  This box allowed me to hook up my drum brain to an Xbox 360 controller so I could use it for Rock Band.  Here is a picture of the box:

And that was it - I had to do a little research to find out how to map my drum pads to the right MIDI codes for Rock Band, but the guys at Doc's did most of the research there so it wasn't too hard.  Below is the finished product:

Click on that last one for labels.  I got a little crazy with the labels..so sue me.  But now I can play Rock Band on a real drum set!