JLee
08-24-2005, 02:47 PM
Well, I took the prevailing advice regarding flipping the piezos over so that the brass side faces up, and it did seem to have a positive influence.
I now have the module mounted properly on the Gibraltar rack, and have everything connected for the snare, 10", 12" toms, hi hat trigger and bass trigger. A couple more bridges are just a few minutes away from completion (8" tom, 14" tom) and the cymbals are still left to do.
The results? Kind of mixed. On the bright side, the Alesis DMPro really does produce great sounds. The tom sounds are very authentic, when you want them to be and it is pretty cool to literally be able to tune a drum up or down with a turn of a knob. The triggering does work better with the brass sides up, so I don't have to set the gain to the ceiling and the threshold to the basement. The response is pretty good over nearly the entire drum head of each of the drums I have completed so far.
The downside: the response so far is not what I had hoped for as far as accuracy is concerned. For example, when playing an open roll, the triggering stays with me only up until a certain point. For closed rolls, it is nowhere close, as the module just emits a volley of sounds when it gets around to it. Also, the module is just not very loud at all, and I am likely going to have to figure out how to amplify the output if I ever hope to play along with recorded music. At 44 years old, and with decades of playing and listening to loud music, and working in the music industry for some of that time, I think it is likely that I have not retained ALL my hearing, but then again, I don't think things are that bad - YET.
And finally, the two items that I bought preconstructed - the kick pedal trigger and the hi hat trigger, play at an even softer level than everything else. I have to hit the hi hat trigger so hard it is about as loud as its regular acoustic counterpart. When my girlfriend put on the headphones and played the kick pedal, she commented that you could hear the acoustic noise much more prominently than the electronic trigger, so I know it is not just me.
Oh well, back to the laboratory in a big way. I think these things are resolvable but I just have a lot more tweaking to do.
I now have the module mounted properly on the Gibraltar rack, and have everything connected for the snare, 10", 12" toms, hi hat trigger and bass trigger. A couple more bridges are just a few minutes away from completion (8" tom, 14" tom) and the cymbals are still left to do.
The results? Kind of mixed. On the bright side, the Alesis DMPro really does produce great sounds. The tom sounds are very authentic, when you want them to be and it is pretty cool to literally be able to tune a drum up or down with a turn of a knob. The triggering does work better with the brass sides up, so I don't have to set the gain to the ceiling and the threshold to the basement. The response is pretty good over nearly the entire drum head of each of the drums I have completed so far.
The downside: the response so far is not what I had hoped for as far as accuracy is concerned. For example, when playing an open roll, the triggering stays with me only up until a certain point. For closed rolls, it is nowhere close, as the module just emits a volley of sounds when it gets around to it. Also, the module is just not very loud at all, and I am likely going to have to figure out how to amplify the output if I ever hope to play along with recorded music. At 44 years old, and with decades of playing and listening to loud music, and working in the music industry for some of that time, I think it is likely that I have not retained ALL my hearing, but then again, I don't think things are that bad - YET.
And finally, the two items that I bought preconstructed - the kick pedal trigger and the hi hat trigger, play at an even softer level than everything else. I have to hit the hi hat trigger so hard it is about as loud as its regular acoustic counterpart. When my girlfriend put on the headphones and played the kick pedal, she commented that you could hear the acoustic noise much more prominently than the electronic trigger, so I know it is not just me.
Oh well, back to the laboratory in a big way. I think these things are resolvable but I just have a lot more tweaking to do.