Thingiverse - k1ds3ns4t10n's Things

I've modded a Rock Revolution drum controller to work with an MSA-P MIDI decoder from highly_liquid so I can play on a real electronic drum set, in my case a Roland TD-3SW . Additionally, I've come up with a way to trigger the cymbal sounds (hi-hat, crash and splash) in Rock Band 2 during freestyle, fills, and big rock endings.

With this mod you will be able to play all four games Rock Band (RB1), Rock Band 2 (RB2), Guitar Hero World Tour (GHWT) and Rock Revolution (RR) on a real electronic drum kit such as a Roland TD-3 with full song charts:

* 4 lanes plus bass pedal in RB1
* 4 lanes plus bass pedal with cymbal sounds during fills in RB2
* 5 lanes plus bass pedal in GHWT
* All 7 lanes (6 pads plus bass pedal) in RR

First of all, why Rock Revolution?

I may be one of only a handful of people on the planet that actually think Rock Revolution is a fun game. From a drummers standpoint, the ability to have 6 different pads plus a pedal on the song charts sounded like a lot of fun, and it definitely is. Additionally, I wanted to use just one modified controller that gave full chart mappings in each game. The Rock Revolution drum controller easily achieve's this goal. It is compatible with all the games that have released at this point, and gives full song charts with each game.

Hasn't the MSA-P mod been done before?

Yes it has. I do not take credit for coming up with the idea to use an MSA-P. To the best of my knowledge, this was the brainchild of a couple guys on the rockband.com forums. In fact, I originally followed their instructions from a rockband.com forum post to mod my RB1 controller.

My mod for the RR controller is very similar to the MSA-P mod for the RB1 controller. All that I really had to do was locate the correct solder points for each drum pad on the Rock Revolution drum controller's circuit board, and I was in business. I also took this one step further and developed a completely new circuit that when wired to the MSA-P, enables the cymbal sounds in Rock Band 2.

Doesn't RB2 already have cymbal sounds?

Yes and No. With the original RB1 modded controller, it was possible to map more than one pad on the real electronic drum set to the same color. For example, I had blue assigned to both the second rack tom, and also to a cymbal. Same went for yellow and green also. This allowed for more realistic drumming because you could now play the cymbal parts on the cymbal pads and the tom parts on the toms. However, in the drum fills and big rock endings, all you got were tom sounds no matter what pad you hit. Hitting a cymbal and hearing a tom sound can really break the sense of realism.