About Us
Who We Are
Extreme Drums Triggers are the brainchild of Marshall Rinker who is one of the early pioneers of DIY acoustic-to-electronic (A2E) drum conversions. And he may very well have been the person responsible for starting the A2E movement that has been going on over the last 20 years. It is a trend that has been growing more favorable with forward thinking modern drummers each year. What started as a hobby for Marshall in the early 90's has become a drummer's
revolution today. And today Marshall and the talented Extreme Drums Team are continuing to push the boundaries of hybrid drums by continuing to introduce cutting-edge e-drum products that will help you turn your acoustic drums into the greatest electronic drums you've ever played.
Where We Came From
The foundations of Extreme Drums would have to go all the way back to Marshall's first love for drums. Being a creative person he started trying to build his own drums at the age of 10. He officially became an acoustic drummer and percussionist in 1960, and also became an e-drummer in 1985 when he bought one of Roland's first electronic drum sets. It was the Roland DDR30 drums with six triangular shaped drum pads and no cymbal pads. The DDR30 module just had six inputs and only had 64 basic sounds to choose from. A few years later he bought an Alesis D4 drum module after it was introduced in 1991, which had 12 inputs and hundreds of drum, cymbal, and percussion sounds. He plugged his six Roland drum pads into it but wanted to take advantage of the other six inputs so he began building more drum pads and other trigger devices to plug into the remaining six inputs. Back then there weren't any electronic cymbals that you could mount on cymbal stands, so Marshall built his first e-cymbals out of Frisbees and put them on cymbal stands. Then he followed up with several more e-cymbal designs using thin wood disks with rubber glued to the top. That was when the e-drum companies were still only offering drum pads instead of electronic cymbals. This is an example of how Marshall's ideas have often been several years ahead of their time. And he has new ideas that he and the Extreme Drums team will be introducing in the near future. So keep watching for what's coming next!
History of Extreme Drums
Extreme Drums was created by Marshall Rinker in 2002 to offer products for drummers to easily convert their acoustic drums into great electronic drums.
Marshall is an inventor who, among other things, invented and patented the world's first Pedal-less Hi-Hat, which later became known as Auxiliary Hi-Hats or Closed Hi-Hats.
While playing a double-bass drum set in bands in the late sixties and early seventies he experimented with different ways to play a closed Hi-Hat while playing both bass drums.
After perfecting his pedal-less Hi-Hat prototype, he obtained a U.S. Patent for it in 1978.
Today there are still several companies making their version of his pedal-less Hi-Hat, such as Gibraltar, Tama, Yamaha, and Ludwig. They go by various names, like X-Hat, Auxiliary Hi-Hat, and Closed Hi-Hat.
Marshall began building drum triggers and e-cymbals in 1992 for himself and a few friends. By the mid 90s he started to convert full size drums and converted his prized drum set, a custom-built 1970 Rogers drum set, into great acoustic-electronic drums.
Later he started to make his drum triggers available for any drummer who wanted to enter the new world of acoustic e-drumming by converting their own drums. e-drumming.
Marshall continues to improving his trigger designs as well invent new products that will be added to the Extreme Drums product line in the near future .
