Hate the standard snare pads? Got an extra snare floating around and a bit of soldering skills? Then here's the easy steps to build your own.
You'll need,
1 1/4" Stereo Jack
2 100ohm resistors
2 piezos (I used 50mm but any will work)
2 extra felt cymbal washers
A piece of whatever for a bracket.
Step 1: Strip the Snare down
Step 2: Mount your bracket.
Step 3: Glue down the first felt, glue down the first piezo, finally the 2nd felt.
Step 4: glue the second piezo to your rim.
Step 5: Solder your lead wires to the 1/4" jack and mount it to the shell. (The vent hole is usually the right size to pop the jack right through.) Wiring your leads is easy, the tip is the snare, shaft is the rim, and ground is well, ground.
Step 6: Solder time, tip lead to piezo 1, shaft is the rim for the second red lead. Take your grounds from the piezos and solder a resistor to each one, then join the far sides of the resitor and solder to the ground lead of the jack. I recommend using heat shrink over the solder joints but it isn't necessary.
Step 7: Check your center piezo height, I recommend it sits about flush with the top of your bearing edge.
Step 8: Reassemble your snare with a mesh head and get to rocking!
I originally built one of these borne from how bad I despise the Nitro Mesh snare. It slowly grew into converting almost my entire kit to these. Super cheap kits off Marketplace are great donors.
I figured since I was tossing one together for a buddy for his birthday I'd document the process this time. Hopefully someone finds this useful!