This is a brand new concept design which was inspired by a lot of talk on Vdrums.com about a three zone ride and this thread (Acoustic to digital drums and Alesis Trigger IO. Need help setting this up correctly.). I thought, if one can build a three zone eCymbal way not a three zone eDrum trigger. This is what I came up with. The following text came for my original post #13 form Vdrums.com.:
After some thought I came up with a 3 zone mesh head snare concept. Now this design will require two inputs from the Alesis trigger I/O to be used. Also, xtalk will need to be tweaked pretty good for this to work. You may not (or may I really don’t know since I have not built it) be able to get the super soft ghost note to register. You also may need to “group” the head zones together. That way only one of the sounds will trigger. I’m just guessing here so take it for what its worth. I just don’t have the money right now to try it. Here are the pics:
I believe this concept would work best with a 12 inch or larger drum. The size would help with zone separation. Be sure to keep some space between the foam ring zone and the drum shell, again this is to help with zone separation. I would also like to point out that this design use my new Mini reflection plate foam sensor that I developed just for the Alesis Trigger I/O. I have already started using this design and it works great! I only stated this to show that it does work. So, at least the center zone should work on the three zone snare.
As for the “Mini Reflection Plate Foam Sensor”, I will save that for another post….
i am satisfied with a dual drum but im still new to edrums and am always intrested in concepts i understand 3 zones in a ride but in a snare why? because as far as i know there’s only 2 on acoustic snares or drum shells? so techno? or what are we gonna do with it?
It’s basically an idea to emulate what is called positional detection. On an acoustic drum, hitting on the outer part of the drum head (i.e. not center) will cause a ringy-er (if that is even a word) type sound. Where as hitting in the very center is a more solid sound. I hope that helps.
ok Thank you but i see this is probably going to ring up prices more and more next thing you know there’s going to be 3 piezos in every drum instead of 1 or 2 and the serious drumstands are also quite cool like from the Roland i would love to hook up a real kit to it
If you play any jaZZ OR latin music such as Bossa Nova or Salsa you will need a cross stick along with the drum and rim shots….I know you can have dedicated two zone snare “SET” but this is a pain, PLUS IT USES UP A DRUM SET UNECESSARILY. Yamaha 502 module and up all have 3 zone snares.
Yamaha makes 3 zone snare on all their upper level kits. Rim shot, drum and cross stick. Excepting for some power rock genres most music uses a cross stick. I have yamaha and wouldn’t live without it. It is a major pain to remember to switch back and forth between kits with rim click or cross stick before you start the song and then there is not rim shot.
BTW no fear that prices will go up if they are 3 zone verses 2 ….we are talking pennies considering the outrageous prices they are charging for electronic drums..
I am very interested in this design….THANKS!
If you are using an original DM10 (not the MK or MK II) you can always try this programming technique:
[DM10] THREE ZONE SNARE (with one dual zone trigger!)
Hope that work for you,
HF
I was wondering if anyone put this concept into practise. Does it work?
Thanks
I did tinker with this back in 2010. It’s very tricky to “tune” the settings. I found it best you set up the center piezo as you normally would and set the outer head zone to only trigger once a particular threshold it achieved. Let the two sound fire off together and it gives a somewhat reasonable approximation of position detection. I did have to use two different trigger inputs for this to work. I’m going of off memory here since it’s been more than a decade since I did my tests.