Rock band/ RB2 official drum sticks and custom pedal review

I’ve got to say, I love Rock band. Ive got it on the 360, and I just got Rock Band 2 (which was surprisingly hard to find under £50)(p.s. i live in the UK). I’m pretty average on guitar, I can play expert but only about half the songs, what I really love about the game is the drums.
I think the drums take real skill, yes, people will moan about that. I am NOT denying that you need ‘real’ skill to play the guitar (on or off a game) but I just think drums are harder to take up.
Anyway, what I was going to talk about.
There are many problems with the rock band drums (Im talking RB1 drums), the loudness, the sticks that get splinters after using them for a long while, and the pedal (breaking, and in general not being very well designed. Also not sensitive enough).
So I first sorted the problem of getting the loudness down, I tried the many methods, like the much used sock mod, though this doesn’t really lower the noise level, which is what you really want if you’re going to be playing the game for a considerable amount of time, or at night.
So after much consideration, I bought the official rock band drum pads, which make it much quieter, and also make the drumming slightly springier, which does help on hard/expert.
But I did this ages ago, so now I am playing on expert, and I couldn’t help get the feeling that there was a problem, mainly with the pedal, and no mine didnt break (for this i think you have to be wearing shoes, or be really hammering away at it). The problem was the sensitivity, its fine enough for most, but on expert, when there are faster beats, the default pedal just doesn’t cut it. So first, mainly because I saw them cheap (on amazon.co.uk), I bought the official rock band 2 drum sticks in black. You may think that this was a pretty stupid move, but theyre unbelievably different from the original sticks. They’re so much lighter, and also bounce a lot more (as well as being slightly longer – though this added no advantage to me), I prefer them, and also though won’t splinter, as the wood is coated with the paint (and probly a gloss). But I also thought, while I was getting new sticks, I might as well get a new pedal, so I bought a real pedal, which I knew could easily be modded, to work with Rock band/ GH:WT (for details, there are plenty of videos on youtube). I would advice that if you are the US/canada, you go for a pedal, such as the destroyer pedal, which is a “premium rock band pedal”. This comes with a lifetime guarantee, and a 30 day trial, unfortunately I don’t live in that whole continent, so I would have to have the other delivery, making it somewhere around the £70 mark. I was not willing to pay that, for that sort of money I might as well go out and buy a really good real pedal and just mod it. But I didnt and saved some money by buying a pedal from http://www.dangleberrymusic.co.uk/search-products.html (also on amazon.co.uk – same price). I bought the cheapest, as like the destroyer, it has a single chain drive, and double spring recoil. That came this morning (don’t worry I’ve thoroughly tested it out by now, playing about 80 songs non stop). [note: I found out with this pedal, you can't use the heel-toe technique, as it isn't long enough, though you could use the double foot tap technique (used by blindzor - check out his youtube videos for further help)]
Then it was just a simple task of modding it and mucking around with the spring to get the optimum bounce/height etc.
To take the sensor out of the old rock band pedal, simply unscrew it at the bottom, underneath the arches (that go over the poles on the drum set), take that out and stick it down on the base of the new pedal (note: don’t use anything thats permanent, you want to be able to reposition it for best results), then you can either take the little magnet out underneath the orange plastic on the original pedal, or get another magnet (the original one is just the size of a watch battery).Try to make sure when the pedal is pressed down, that its directly over the magnet, where i placed it, the magnet just stayed on a screw, where it wouldnt move, though you may want to place it some where else.
Then all you have to do is get the right sensitivity for you. I first went into drum trainer and then freestyle mode, this means it just has a blank board, and you can play along to your own music if you want. But I basically just kept trying the pedal at different positions, channging the springs etc each time, basically trial and error.
And thats basically it, I now have a great pedal and I can make the fastest hit with just a quick tap.