Frugal Friday

Today marks the first installment of a weekly post I will call "Frugal Friday."  Each Friday I will post a helpful and cheap tip that you may not know about.  I will first start out my telling you what kind of drum equipment it pertains to and what materials you will need.  I will either post detailed photos or a video so that you will know exactly how to execute these fixes.  Today's helpful tip involves something almost all drummers overlook, but has devastating results when ignored.  The good news is that today's installment will cost you absolutely no money.

I am going to address the the problem of replacing center-hole protectors (sleeves) that come preinstalled on cymbal stands.  These are great little pieces of of plastic that protect our expensive investments.  That is... until they wear out.  Until now, you have had two choices.  Either let the cymbal stand wear away at your cymbal or pay the hefty price at the music store for replacements.  You actually already have little pieces of plastic like this in your house, they are called pen caps!'

The best ones to use are caps from Bic Pens.  The only thing that you will have to do is cut of the tip of the cap and remove the strip on the bottom that helps secure the pen when it's in you pocket.  There you have it, you just made a new replacement cymbal sleeve from a pen cap.  When you are done it should look and fit on your cymbal stand like the one in this photo.

I hope this first tip was helpful to everyone.  Let me know what you think in the comments section, and tell me if there are any other pesky issues that you have been trying to attack.  Be sure to check bad next Frugal Friday, where I will address installing an alternative bass drum impact pad.  Have a great Frugal Friday!