Turning an acoustic to an electronic kit

I've searched the forum looking for similar posts but I can't seem to find any:

Is there anyway I can turn my acoustic into an e-drum kit? For instance, can i buy mesh heads that attach to my drum hoop or something and plug into a module which I can then plug some headphones into, or even plug directly into my comp (if i get the right soundcard)? I don't want to go out and buy a whole new e-drum kit, and if i buy triggers for my drums, that won't eliminate the sound my acoustic kit.

I want to practice silently and be able to record directly into my computer but I don't want to shell out the money for an e-drum kit. I have sound-offs to play silenty but I can't stand them. So is this completely impossible or what? Thanks!

Check this place out:

http://www.derksens.com/Beatnik_mirror.htm

That has info on how to make your own setup to convert your kit.

I suggest if you're going to do it, using the "More involved" trigger setup.

This is how it would look if you decided to use regular heads vs. mesh heads.

Hope that helps. I have been using home made triggers for a while now with no problems.

Getting mesh heads and triggers from MF or whatever should also work without a problem if you decide you wanna dish out the cash.

Getting mesh heads and adding triggers can work, but there are couple of pitfalls to look out for.

Of particular concern to me was the fact that many mesh heads feel like playing on panty hose stretched over a drum hoop vs. playing on a drum. This is especially soggy feeling on larger drums.

In addition to that, triggering gets problematic on drums over 13" or 14" in diameter because of the resonant frequencies of piezo transducers, the movement of the heads, reverberation, the amount of air space (without getting too techy, it gets trickier to get consistent triggering and for those two reasons you will see few off the shelf kits go with larger diameter drums).

I've been tinkering and testing electronic percussion stuff for a while now and have got into testing and beta testing stuff too. I've modified some off the shelf stuff improving it and recently decided to do one of these "conversion" kits just to see how I could do.

Without going into volumes of what I did, I will make two very general suggestions to anyone wanting to do something along these lines.

My project got a little deep into extra cute stuff and design and I'll be talking about it at my sites soon, but bottom line, you can convert drums with little more than mesh heads and triggers and get very good results. With a little extra effort you can great results.

any ideas on what material you can use to make a trigger cymbal pad. I was thinking you could sandwich a piezo between a plastic disk and the material you use to make wetsuits (neoprene maybe?). I'm looking to do the same thing (convert to electric) because once I leave school, I have to be able to practice in silence the vast majority of the time.

i'd say just stuff a whole bunch of pillows and sheets and crap into your drums to make them completely dead, with triggers on the heads.