Labeled Drum Buttons – DIY

[Florian W.Participant]

Hi folks,

since i have the Zaquencer i have been unable to remember where i exactly mapped which percussion instrument. I also felt uncomfortable with labeling around the upper knobs, since it’s already pretty crowded in this area. Nevertheless i looked for a solution close to no-budget and actually found one. The concept definitely needs some refinement, but i like how it turned out and wanted to share it with you anyway. Hope you like it, any input is highly appreciated

Cheers

Flo

• This topic was modified 6 years ago by  Florian W..

[Florian W.Participant]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ydwmt4tg5ezoqyy/20181110_125043.jpg?dl=0

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by  Florian W..

[Florian W.Participant]

Hmmm. Didnt work so well with the images. I think i will be adding some straight links here.

[Florian W.Participant]

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/od19jqnvq6d0tla/AACIAVguK0jFGgqH_hv952pPa?dl=0

[Florian W.Participant]

Here comes the sketchy DIY stuff, for those who are interested. If you are looking for a 15minute Plug n Play solution, this is not for you. I am curious if anybody has made similar attempts yet.

About a year ago i got myself one of those dirt cheap BCD3000 for sourcing parts – actually not finding what i wanted – since it is equipped with potentiometers and not encoders. Anyway, i got it for 20€, that’s fine with me. It has 20 of those BCR-ish (kind of, explanation following) backlit buttons with a silver paint on them and so i decided to give it a try and label them instead of the original ones.

For labeling I went for DIY transparent laser printable decals. Cheap ones on ebay are 2€ / A4 Sheet. I found “Adobe Heiti Std R” font size 11 to be fine, with the printer set up for very thick paper, so that the toner is burning in nicely. They are similar to these old school scale model type decals. Didn’t have them for decades. Awesome stuff! They are cut out and watered for 10s and directly applied on the cleaned buttons. After they were completely dry (hairdryer assisted) i applied 2 layers of clearcoat and let it sit over night.
This morning i removed the upper control and display assembly ( 4 screws under the side panel ) and unscrewed the pcb. I found the buttons NOT to be exactly the same. The silver ones are a few mm shorter and sit right on the leds – rendering them useless. At least they have just enough slack to sit in the guiding holes in the pcb. So I didn’t want to give up too early but it had to be a solution which is completely and flawlessly removable. In the end i shortened the translucent part with a dremel and hotglued all the buttons directly onto the momentary switches underneath. This is tedious and it took me several attempts to exactly line up all the buttons and have a nice clicky feedback, but it works!

For anyone who wants to give it a try – original BCR Buttons could be painted, but this would require the translucent part to be removed and afterwards glued back in place. This would mean you dont need any salvaged parts, and no hotglue mess, but have a little more extra dremel action.

Again, this is for those of you, who like the small details. I personally enjoyed this, hope you like it!

[ChristianKeymaster]

Loving it! Thanks for sharing!

[Matt RozemaParticipant]

That is an amazing amount of work, but it looks great finished!
Love the wood cheeks also!

[Author]

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