Hotspot and general triggering issues

[Piezo]

I will first try to cool the pad down.




Would somebody be so kind as to explain to me how to build a dual-piezo-pad voltage divider step by step? I bought 2 100k trim-pots and 2 female stereo jacks. I can't read diagrams (as "easy" as dmitris voltage-divider-diagram might read to some of you...) so please speak in "descriptive" terms to me


Thank you!!

[Maylord.war]

I hope this small schematic can help you

For the reference of jack see this

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8725/trs20jack.jpg

[Piezo]

Thank you maylord.war!


Here we go: I built a voltage divider with a 100k trimpot. One thing I immediately noticed: dynamic got waaay better. Downside: My pad got pretty shitty (excuse my language) in terms of sensitivity. Making the stick "jump" until it stops will only result in a signal at the very beginning (when hits are still strong). Also, when setting the trimpot to zero I do not get the original trigger-results I had before the voltage divider. It almost seems as if, even though being set to zero, the trimpot still functions as some sort of resistor.

Highlevel is at 116 now. Seems a little low to me.


What the heck is going on here?

[angr77]

Hi!
The lost in sensitivy could be compensated in MD using the shift level parameter - Increasing it from 0 to 16 or 24 would take care about the low velocity notes.

vodoochild_ar80 posted yesterday a suggestion on a new type of Piezo triggers. Sounded fine..but there was a another thing that caught my interest - the link to the manufacturer site also included another product: A Piezo DRUM kit.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10772

In that kit they also included besides the piezos acouple of 1 M ohm resistors...which was supposed to sit in parallell with the piezo. Have some body tried this and what the outcome would be...?

angr77

[Piezo]

Tried every option...16, 24, 48 and 56....didn't make much of a difference....

[angr77]

Try to add the ComprLvl=3 and stay with LvlShift=24.

Best Regards

ANGR77

[Piezo]

No improvement so far. I guess I'll drive to my local music store and plug my drum into a Roland TD module to see how it triggers there. Just to make sure that it's not my drums fault.

[Maylord.war]

Compression and Level Shift can't solve the problem, because icrase o compressing only the processed note from piezo signals.

Dear Piezo try to set to zero the voltage head divider, set gain 8 and threshold to 2 or 1 , what happen?

I suggest to upload some pictures to see the inside of your pad.

The double-sided tape under the piezo cone in which surface is collocated?

[daniele99]

Every little change in a Roland style pad construction (most in a snare!!) has effect on triggering. And every part you change is correlated to another part: cone, piezo (material, shape,protrusion),mounting plate (weight, shape), silent washers, double sided tape (material, shape, diameter). Everything of these elements affect the signal (waveform, that must be the more sinusoidal you can) and the crosstalk among the sensors. It's not so easy to manufacture a pad that gives a real drum feeling!!
That's one of the reason why Roland makes them in japan and not in china (not the brains, the keys and other stuff). And "partially" the reason of their unbelievably high price (the other part is on patents, profit and alike)!!
I figured this out cause i had to re-build my snare completly to rich the goal. Maylord knows the issues, he saw my pics.
So please post some pictures, maybe we can help you
MD can do that! It's only a matter of time...

[Maylord.war]

Support in part what he says Daniele99

The explanations are true, just a little mistake and you have problems ...

The fact is, however, until you can make comparisons ( for example with other pad or piezo) become more difficult to find the problem.

Not for nothing that I asked you to check what happens with gain to 8 and threshold 2or3, Megadrum being very sensitive (especially on hot piezo pad) , generally Megadrum with threshold near the zero generate a costant of midi note activity , like machine gun.
If you do not get this "feedback" i thinks the problem is not totally in the pad but also within pcb megadrum.

However ( caro Daniele ) i've never see your pictures of your pad