Megadrum and Millenium MPS-600 14" Ride Cymbal

[Frawo]

Hi everybody!

After weeks of building an enclosure, soldering jacks and configuring my new Megadrum-Kit I'm ready for my first post here.

All in all, I have to say that I'm very happy with the Megadrum, as I get much more dynamic out of my diy kit than with my old brain, the Alesis Trigger IO. Unfortunately I now ran into some problems and would really appriciate your help:

First, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a stereo cymbal, because my diy cymbals are all mono and I don't know how to build a durable switch for them. So I bought the Millenium described above as a ride, but I can't configure it. Main problem is that the pad is very unresponsive. The auto-highlevel does not suggest any higher value than 64 with all other settings set to default. With some threshold settings on the rim I sometimes get Bell-Triggering at least, but its far from being playable.

I can get a high level of 500 when I set gain to 6 (anything above gain 6 results in permanent triggering) and level shift to 56. But I'm unable to find the right threshold for the Rimtrigger then.

OK, I know the Milleniums are not the best cymbals out there, but I can't believe that this behavior is typical for these cymbals. I did a lot of research on this forum and believe some of you have these kind of cymbals in use.

Another thing that I recently noticed is that I sometimes get a hihat sound when I hit the floortom very softly. I don't believe this is an Xtalk issue because it also happens when I keep the pads mechanical isolated. Could this have to do with bad soldering on the jacks?

Kind regards,
Frank

[dmitri]

I can get a high level of 500 when I set gain to 6 (anything above gain 6 results in permanent triggering) and level shift to 56. But I'm unable to find the right threshold for the Rimtrigger then.

Is this problem present on any input?
Does the cymbal has a signal level trimpot?
Is it a brand new cymbal without any faults?

Another thing that I recently noticed is that I sometimes get a hihat sound when I hit the floortom very softly. I don't believe this is an Xtalk issue because it also happens when I keep the pads mechanical isolated. Could this have to do with bad soldering on the jacks?

Is anything connected to the HiHat input?
Does it happen with light hits only and only with the foortom?
Does it happen if you connect the floortom to another input?

[Frawo]

Hi Dmitri,

thanks for answering!

I can get a high level of 500 when I set gain to 6 (anything above gain 6 results in permanent triggering) and level shift to 56. But I'm unable to find the right threshold for the Rimtrigger then.

Is this problem present on any input?
Does the cymbal has a signal level trimpot?
Is it a brand new cymbal without any faults?

Yes, I tested it on three inputs. Same result everywhere. The cymbal does not seem to have a signal level trimpot, at least I could not find one. It's a brand new cymbal that shouldn't have any faults. But who knows ...

I don't think its the modules fault. When I connect one of my DIY mono cymbals to the Ride port, I get a good, consistent signal.
So if there is nothing I can do about this, I'm going to send it back and stick with my DIY cymbals. I am just wondering, because in some threads here I read about Millenium cymbals. Mostly about the MPS-400, but there can't be such a difference in signal to my MPS-600 ...

Another thing that I recently noticed is that I sometimes get a hihat sound when I hit the floortom very softly. I don't believe this is an Xtalk issue because it also happens when I keep the pads mechanical isolated. Could this have to do with bad soldering on the jacks?

Is anything connected to the HiHat input?
Does it happen with light hits only and only with the foortom?
Does it happen if you connect the floortom to another input?

I just got rid of this problem! After resetting megadrum it was gone. I then had some strange crosstalk on other pads (similar to that of the floortom), but disabling every note that is not in use did the trick!

Greetings,
Frank

[dmitri]

So if there is nothing I can do about this, I'm going to send it back and stick with my DIY cymbals. I am just wondering, because in some threads here I read about Millenium cymbals. Mostly about the MPS-400, but there can't be such a difference in signal to my MPS-600 ...

Set Gain to 5, HighLvlAuto to Yes and HighLevel to 64. Hit the cymbal hard a dozen times.
What do you see in HighLevel now?

[Frawo]

Hi Dmitri,

I tried two times. The first time I got 194 in HighLevel, the second time 169.

Greetings,
Frank

[dmitri]

Try again with Gain set to 8.

[Frawo]

Hi Dmitri,

ok, now I get 568 ... but gain over 6 also results in permanent triggering. Btw, this happens on all other inputs as well.

Is there another problem coming up?

Greetings,
Frank

[dmitri]

You have to obviously raise the Threshold.

[angr77]

I have a MPS400 in my setup...I have a threshold on 26 on the head trigger and 29 on the rim. I am using gain 0...and get high values on about 750. Sounds weird that the MPS-600 would differ so much in settings...

You can find the complete setup in a syx-file + picture of the configuration on the http://powerhell.wordpress.com/about/zourman/poor-mans-td-20/megadrum-pad-library/...If you get yours MPS-600 working...please post your findings back to me!

Best Regards

ANGR77

[Frawo]

Hi Anders,

thank you for taking part in this diskussion. Of course I've known your website before, its a great resource of information that no megadrummer should miss.

And to be honest I've bought the MPS-600 after having seen that the MPS-400 works in your edrum setup. I thought there can't be much difference, too ...

I finally decided to give the the cymbal back, as I'm still not able to configure it properly. With gain set to 8 I get a high level that is ok, and raising the threshold turns of the permanent triggering (thanks dmitri!), but with these settings I can't get the bell trigger to work.

So, if the cymbal turns out to be faulty, I will have another try on this one. Then I will of course share my settings and thoughts on the cymbal here in this thread. But if it turns out that the cymbal was ok, I will try to convert one of my DIY mono cymbals to stereo.

Greetings,
Frank