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I add support for 3 zone Yamaha style cymbals in firmware version 20081020.
This is a rough guide to configuring 3 zone Yamaha style cymbals with MegaDrum.
This is a schematic of a 3 zone Yamaha style cymbal (thanks to elrules for digging it up):


Say you connect it to a Ride input.
1. Set RideB->Note to a Ride Bow note.
2. Set RideB->Dual Head to 'Yes' (NOT 3way!).
3. Set RideE->Note to a Ride Edge note.
4. Set RideE->Threshold between 55 and 70. My test setup works best around 60
5. Set RideE->Type to 'Switch'
6. Set RideE->BNote to a Ride Bell note.
7. Set RideE->BThreshold between 18 and 40. My test setup works best around 25

These are minimum required steps for configuring a 3 zone Yamaha style cymbal. Of course you will need to adjust all other settings for the Ride to get best results.

Excellent work !!

from the news page
> 6 zone Alesis style cymbals is on its way.

which are this 6 zone Alesis style cymbals?

Hypothetical question, are yamaha style 3 zones 'reverese compatible'? or better yet is the issue I'm writing about even an issue? When I finally build my drums I plan to make all my cymbals with 3 zones, But I'm worried that if I'm using a software (which I haven't decided on yet) which doesn't have 3 zone sample for every cymbal (like crashes/splashes/chinas). Will it still work, or could I run into an issue of having 'dead zones' where hitting the bell wouldn't trigger anything.

Don't see a problem. Assign the same note to the bow and the bell or to the edge and the bell. Or am I missing something?

jamalpiper - Your synth may or may not support 3 zones for every cymbal, more than likely not. For example, Addictive Drums provide only a crash and choke for crash cymbals. So you'd have a bell trigger that would not map visually and audibly to the crashes in Addictive Drums. However, you can still use the bell for triggering other things - really whatever you want like a cowbell, loop, kick drum, timbale, whatever.

anyone build a DIY 3 zone Yamaha compatible?

Yes, clearly building a DIY cymbal to work with this excellent feature will be the tricky part. That's a totally different topic all together.

johnvpr wrote:anyone build a DIY 3 zone Yamaha compatible?

If you refer to if it has been tested. See this topic from the beta testing stage. It works awesome!

elrules wrote:Hi dimitri, I have tested both trizone features. THis is what I got:

Common Settings:
InputB Gain 4
InputB DynLvel 1
InputB DynTime 64
InputB Xtalk 0

Yamaha trizone feature:
InputB Threshold 20
InputE Threshold 55
InputE BThreshold 18

I was able to get the three zones. Bell was quite easy to get. Good response. I found difficult to find a correct value of Edge Threshold. Higher value made my bow hits become an edge sound. If I lowered edge threshold it was more difficult to get an edge sound on an edge hit. 55 seems to be an optimal value for me. Here is a video test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZDn4CMxPw0