First things first... how do you get the drum pad to make a sound? You can take a nice practice pad made by remo that feels just like a drum head and disassemble it. Now take a piezo transducer (found at any radio shack, really inexpensively) and hot glue it to a metal coffee can lid (or any 28 gauge metal disk) some guys have even used a CD. This is a great use for those useless AOL CDs you get in the mail. By gluing the the coffee can lid, or CD, to the trigger, it will pick up the vibration from anywhere you hit the pad where the coffee can lid is underneath, and the best part of that is that its just like a real drum head, the farther you get from the center, the lower the tone and volume. Now take that trigger and coffee can lid assembly and place it inbetween two pads of foam and solder the leads off of the trigger to a RCA jack (again from radio shack) using stranded speaker wire and mount the RCA jack to the plastic base of the practice pad and reassemble the practice pad the way it came apart. Okay, your drum pad trigger is complete. Just do this for all 3 toms and snare and bass. As for the cymbals and more detailed instructions with photos checkout the webisite www.electronicdrums.com/frames/byo_frame.htm These guys know what they're doing!
Next, you need a rack to support the practice pads. I have found this 5piece modular practice pad set made by Remo and it includes the bass pad, the two high tom pads, one floor tom pad, and one pad to simulate the snare. Now the great thing about this is that you can't hardly find this set cheaper by individual parts or to even build the rack yourself. This rack is light weight and easily transported. Each of the included pads has the removable head and allows you to adjust the head tension just like a real drum. Not a bad deal really. The only thing left are the cymbals and the high hats.
Finally you need the drum module to plug the triggers into. Instead of buying a brand new drum module, buy a used one from eBay! Its cheaper and, well its cheaper and you just can't beat that. So now you're ready to go! You just need an amp and a set of headphones and you can go to town! If you're just going to practice using a headset, you can just get a tiny little amp (thats inexpensive) and use the headphone jack on it. When you get better, you can upgrade your amp, up to a Behringer if you like. I would recommend this amp becuase now that you're a drummer you're going to have friends that play guitar and bass and all that kinna stuff and they're going to want to come over and play with you and to do that you need to have an amp for them to plug into. I recommend this Behringer mixer becuase it has a 10 channel mixing capability (one channel for your drums, and the other channels open for instruments and voice) and 500watt output. It works great for jamming and playing at schools and such. (don't worry, it lists for $399, but for any brother or sister with low cash flow, it is also available on ebay!)
