Great work, David!
How is connecting/disconnecting?

I am still waiting for delivery ...

David, I would have done it different from your installation. I would have mounted the buttons directly to the Stick to eliminate the second piece of wood. I would have countersunk the mating part to the other piece of wood to further reduce the spacing issue.

I ordered keyhole hangers instead of the plastic ones, because they are thinner and made of metal. When I countersink the keyhole hangers, the spacing profile is narrower. A screw is the mating component and the friction is set by turning the screw head in or out. With any luck, I can use the existing Stick screws as the second component for the keyhole hangers.

With the 3 connectors it requires quite a firm 'knock' to get the plate properly 'home', and similar to release it.

To take the Stick off the stand it's far easier to undo the drum stand clamp than to attempt to separate the triple button fixing in-situ.

The eagle eyed may notice that I also switched the mounting plate that attaches to the clamp. I'd found an Alesis module mounting plate. It's plastic, but half the price of the Gibraltar metal plate, so I thought I'd give it a go. It appears to do the job just as well.

So far I've resisted any irreversible alteration to the Stick itself, hence making use of the existing belt hook fixings.


That would certainly help, but I was just looking for a 'proof of concept' approach I could achieve in less than an hour with materials already to hand.


That sort of adjustability would certainly be handy.

Pondering on that, I don't think you'll be able to use the existing screws to hold the hanger between teh screw head and the Stick body if that's what you mean?

Even with 'flat belt hook mount' screws to get the heads close to the Stick body you'd need to screw them in an extra 20mm & there is no where 'inside the Stick' for that extra to go.

The wooden block I have attached to the Stick is there to accommodate that extra length. However if you could find shorter machine screws of the same spec, reusing the existing holes becomes a possibility. Whether or not you have a plate or some such attached to the Stick then becomes a matter of whether or not you mind the idea of scratching the Stick with the mating part of the keyhole hanger (I'm just guessing that might be an issue - maybe it would not)?

A neat thing about the button fix connectors is the 'marker tool'. The pin on that gives you a precise location for the button - assuming that you have started by fixing the location(s) of the other part of the mount.

Here's another picture from yesterday's exercise. This shows the fixings in the earlier position before I moved the third fixing to remove the wriggle, and with the 'marker tools' still in place.



If the connection was reversed with the buttons somehow reusing the existing fixing holes to allow them to be mounted direct on the Stick, the 'marker tools' would not have a role & the 'non-button' parts would need to be positioned on the removable part by very careful measurement.

You are correct about not being able to use the existing Stick screws for my setup. On my (1978) Stick, the belt hook screws are on a curved part of the body. On my Railboard, the screw holes are too close together for the monopod to fit in between.

The keyhole hanger is completely countersunk so that it cannot come into direct contact with the Stick body. The mating screw head drops into the countersunk slot to connect to the keyhole hanger.

Ah, I see. The screw head projects into your 'plate' so those metals edges on the fixing will be clear of the surface of the Stick body. Makes sense now. Thanks for the extra detail.

It seems to me that you're just trying to remove that big obtrusive belt hook.

I don't really see it as being a problem. I'm not trying to make my stick skinnier so I can pack it with other stuff.

I am one of the lucky ones that has a tagg interface, which I don't really use very often, but it's nice to have. I need try to reinvent the wheel on that one.

My belt works fine standing or sitting. A lap bar is nice to have, because I'm fat, and put on quite a few pounds since covid. . I just ordered a couple lap bars from Brian baggett.

Bob Culbertson had some velcro lap bar that he modified on his sticks, which seems to work nice.

In the beginning I broke at least two belt hooks. Mostly from bending over without pulling my stick out of the belt. I was able to crazy glue one back together and it still works fine. I am a lot more careful now, when I bend over I pull my stick out of the belt.

What you guys have is a great idea but you need to mount that to some kind of custom belt. You also have to make it look good.

The only thing that scares me is once you to destroy the threads in the wood of the Stick, you would have to put some kind of helicoil or nut insert in it, or bigger screws. Removing the belt hook a few times, made me very leery of this type of project, as they are machine screws going into hardwood. You don't want to screw and unscrew into wood very often as you will end up stripping the threads, not to mention the fact that wood expands and contracts throughout seasons.

Good luck with your project, maybe mounting a permanent steel or aluminum plate to the back end of the stick and then screwing into that might be an option.
This way you're only really screwing the plate onto the stick and leaving that on, then you can mount whatever you want to the plate as long as it's threaded to receive whatever buttons or hooks that you want to put on.

Just tossing ideas around.

I don't use belt hooks or straps anymore. For the longest time, I played laying down flat on my back with the belt hook and strap removed. Since installing my adjustable custom monopod, I seldom play laying down anymore. In a matter of seconds, I can adjust the monopod for either the sitting or standing position.

Folks have this idea that a Stick monopod will spin all over the place. I don't know where they get this idea as the monopod has a rubber foot on the bottom and it won't spin unless you deliberately force it to spin. The best feature of the monopod is that the Stick becomes weightless and can instantly be positioned to any comfortable place. I will never go back to the belt hook and strap system.

My next step is to make a removable monopod for my Railboard. I want to make it removable so that it takes up less space in the storage case. I plan to make a very thin streamlined storage case for both my Stick and Railboard. I find that the original storage cases are way too bulky especially for air travel. When I am done with my projects, I will sell the original cases.

BTW - the metal keyhole hangers arrived today. https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07K2RBDC8