Franken-Kit 1.0

[airflamesred]

That looks really neat. That aluminium extrusion will have no flex at all. That maybe good but I worry for croostalk. What is the playing surface to be?

[shaugnd]

Correct. The extrusion has very little flex at short lengths. I was going for something fairly rigid. I'm handling cross talk mitigation in a couple of ways. First, there is 1/4" of foam between the strike bars and the strike bar rail, similar to a vibraphone or a marimba. Also in Marimba fashion, there is to be marimba cording threaded through the strike bars and the posts mounted between them. So the bars are secured in place without any rigid connections like screws or adhesives. This should keep cross talk to a level that the MD can easily differentiate between intentional strikes and vibration bleed over from adjacent strike bars/keys.

The actual playing surface will be of old school mouse pad material. It is about a quarter of an inch thick. You may remember them. More recently, the same material has been used to make drum silencer pads that go over acoustic drum heads to quiet them down for practicing. It is very durable stuff and has a nice playing feel. Not dead, but not too bouncy. I hope to get the basic frame done this week and then move on to finishing off the individual keys next week.

Getting the piezos and jacks in place is going to be tedious work. As will drilling the mallet cord holes. In retrospect, I should have done that before I put the spacer foam in place. Now I'm going to have to take it out, drill, and then put it back in. Oh well. It's only one octave.

[bcrosier]

Thanks for the updates! Keep them coming - it will be a while before I'm able to move forward with such a project, but your ideas and solutions provide some great ideas for how I want to move forward when I do!

[shaugnd]

Got a little bit of work in today. I was able to construct the framework that the MegaDrum actually sits in.

I've added a couple of pictures (numbers 18 and 19 are new) to the archive here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B84W6J9yhBcRQzFkWGZXV05kY0E&usp=sharing


So far, the most striking thing is how unbelievably heavy this thing is. I didn't think about this initially, but as I'm moving it around in the shop/garage, I'm coming to the realization that, when it is all said and done, this thing his going to weigh a ton. I don't mind that. A bunch of mass equals a bunch of inertia which means I'll be able to beat on it pretty roughly and it isn't going anywhere. If, however, portable is in YOUR plans, then you might want to wait for me to do a final weigh in to make sure it isn't too heavy for your application before leveraging this design.

The crazy thing is that I am using the light duty EcoShape framing. I cannot imagine what this thing would weigh if I used the heavy duty stuff. It is quite clear that if I go to build a "concert" size with 56 keys (7.5 octaves) I'm going to need heavy duty wheels and a couple of horses to move it around. Forget about needing a vehicle with room for a 14 foot slab of musical instrumentation. Perhaps 3 octaves is a nice compromise. At current dimensions, each octave requires about 2ft of linear space. The whole thing is about 14 inches deep including the MegaDrum unit, if anyone was wondering. Without the MegaDrum unit, it is only 12.5 inches deep. The MD has to stick out from the front a bit in order to allow room for the patch cables to drop between the natural row and the sharp/flat row. This keeps all the cabling fairly centralized and allows me to use just one cable tray to keep everything nice and tidy. The fact that the sharp/flat row is a half step offset from the naturals row makes it so that the right angle TRS jacks won't interfere with each other, though plugging and unplugging them might be a bit difficult. Frankly, once they are plugged in, I don't see a reason to unplug and replug them with any sort of frequency, so I'm not worried about that. If this was to be a production unit, I would likely hardwire everything with a DB25 cable on one end and the piezos soldered to the appropriate pair on the other. The TRS jack configuration gives me the flexibility to reroute one or more triggering surfaces to another device if I ever want to do that. It also reduces potential electrical issues and gives each peizo it's own hot and neutral wire that is well insulated and separated from all the others. Plus, did I mention that I'm terrible at soldering? My hands shake, so it never goes well for me. But, for you, it might be an option worth considering. It would likely reduce overall cost by about 25 or 30 dollars.



In case anyone wonders, the name MegaMalletRex came from the following logic:

It is MegaDrum Based.
It is a Mallet Kat like thing.
It is made mostly of Rexroth Structural Aluminum framing.

I probably won't get anything done over the weekend with Easter and what not going on. But who knows. Stay Tuned.

[airflamesred]

Thats a pity about your soldering disability. I wondered why you had the 1U MD. In the long run you'de be better with some sort of multi core plug rather than the individual jacks.
As I found, getting to the second octave and you find there isn't enough room for any more jacks on the back

[shaugnd]

Well, the 1U MD was actually given to me by a friend who no longer used it. I suppose I could take it apart and direct wire things. If this was going to be something I sold, I would likely do a custom enclosure and a wire bundle branching out to the individual piezos.

In this case I'm not sure how many octaves I'll end up doing. It depends on what is reasonable for the space I have and how I envision using it. Two or three would be the most I use, I think. I intend to put a trigger on the right and one on the left of the "keyboard" to shift the key values up and down an octave, the same way Kieth McMillen does with his QueNexus. If that works out, 3 would be the most I would ever need.

As I am thinking about it, I think I'll probably end up doing 2 octaves, using both channels on 12 of the 29 inputs on the MD that I have. Plus 2 channels on 1 input for the switching octave triggers, and 1 input more for a sustain pedal. That will leave 14 inputs or 28 channels left to use for something else. What else? Who knows. I'm never quite sure what else my brain is going to come up with. The other option is to just use each jack as a single channel input (except for the octave switching triggers which would be two channels on the same input) to save on wiring complexity until I actually have another purpose. Even then, I'd still have 3 inputs (6 channels) left over to use for triggering sound effects, or lighting control, or something else entirely that I haven't thought up yet.

I've always wanted to try the midi-to-dmx lighting control thing. There is so much that you can do with dmx, that one could pull off a pretty interesting one-man-show. It'd be a lot of effort, but an interesting project.

[shaugnd]

Been sidelined for a few days with back issues, so no progress since Friday. Hopefully I'll get a couple things done this week and post some pics.

[shaugnd]

LemonPie,

thanks for the comment. I do intend to finish the project. I am using the 56 input unit as well. If all goes well, I will add more octaves. Initially, I am just doing one, which will take up 12 channels. Actually, I think that you can get the materials that I am using from a local Bosh Rexroth distributor in Argentina. I can post the pat numbers for the aluminum framing segments used to construct the frame and the ones used to make the strike surfaces (keys).

I've been dealing with a disc problem in my back, so haven't been able to work on it much. Hopefully, I'll get back to it in the next week or so. I will post here when I make new progress.

[BassicallyNice]

Is MegaMalletRex complete? I read the earlier posts and tried to view the picture links, but I couldn't find the pictures.

[LDeVose2]

I am brand new on this board. I have just joined today.

I have been playing afro-latin percussion since I was tall enough to reach the top of my father's congas. It seems like this is a UK-based board, so I will point you to your favorite search engine for my current age. I was born on Bastille Day during Hurricane Abby in Newark, NJ, USA.

I have always wanted to become facile with the bar-mallet instruments. I just cannot afford either the digital or conventional version, so I have for the past couple of years, since I saw Roy Ayers perform on a mallet synth, looked for a used one. Unsuccessful, I have recently gone the way of seeking to build my own.

I know I need a "trigger", the keyboard. Then I need a tone generator. Then I need an amplifier. Then I need to be able to shape the sound. Then I need an analog to digital converter (maybe this replaces the sound shaper?). This should feed into a USB interface, which goes to some MIDI server (will SONAR be good?). I think this is the basic scheme.

My questions are:

1. Has anyone ever arrived at a working solution for the keyboard?
2. What roles between the keyboard and PC does Megadrum fulfill?
3. HOW DO YOU BUY MEGADRUM!?! Or maybe it is not sold to Yankees?
4. What is MegaMalletRex?

Or maybe I should be happy with the sax and Afro-latin percussion, and earn enough money to buy a manufactured mallet synthesizer?

Is there a book or other printed resource that directly explains the principle and practicum of what is needed for a successful DIY project?

Thank you. I find in my searches discussions going back to 2009, but I find no "I DID IT!!!" posts.

Again I thank you for your learned instruction.