DIY dual zone pads, only head works every time?

[DxxS]

Hi all, I have a Roland TD-9 and have converted an old tom to two extra pads. I have wired the piezo's as in the attached picture(Head black and Rim red to sleeve, head red to tip and rim black to ring).
When plugged in to the roland wiring loom the head works every time but the rim is rather hit and miss, when plugged in to the aux ports with its own cable the head again works fine but the rim hardly ever works. I have tested the cable by connecting a roland pad and the cable is fine.
Could anyone offer any advise as to what could be the issue?

Also attached a pic of the pad if you're interested.

Thanks,.
Dave.

[Meshopotamia]

If you have Roland-standardized your wiring and polarity reversed the head piezo such that its red is joined to the rim piezo's black and both those are connected to plug shield ground, then make sure you mounted the rim piezo on the rim and not as the head trigger?

Roland uses the negative half-wave to know it was the head being struck first or not and differentiate a rim sensor, might confuse things if otherwise? Looks to me from the wiring (I could be wrong) that you've maybe mounted the the polarity reversed piezo as rim? Hard to tell without a meter and the jack in front of me though.

[DxxS]

Thanks for your reply, in the first pic the head piezo is the larger one on the right.
If i've understood your post correctly my wiring is back to front?
Thanks.

[Meshopotamia]

TRS2.png Not sure what you mean. Here's how it should map out for a 'hard' Roland negative first half wave and dual piezos…. Shield (larger longer metal area) gets black wire of Rim Piezo, and Red wire of Head piezo. Next band gets Red of Rim Piezo. Tip contact gets Black of Head Piezo.

Lame quickie diagram attached.

[Meshopotamia]

Other thing which might be the cause (assuming cables all fine, etc) is to check that your setting for the trigger input setting for that drum is not set to a cymbal type, i.e, with a switch for the rim or edge, you are going to want one which allows for a dual piezo input, and not piezo + switch trigger setup. I think based on a read of the manual you might want a PD85 selection.

[JmanWord]

Trigger parameter settings on a DIY Piezo/Piezo pad can be very different from the stock pad settings for a Roland Piezo/Piezo pad. You didn't mention anything about what pad type you have the module set to. As Meshopotamia mentioned you need to set the pad type to a piezo/piezo type first of all. 2nd you really need to adjust the trigger parameters for your pad. Rimshot adjust and Rim Gain are 2 of the settings that deal specifically with how easy and how loud the rimshot is triggered. Here is a very basic set of instructions I did many years back about adjusting those parameters. This was written for the Piezo/Piezo special splitter, but the procedure is still the same: http://www.vdrums.com/forum/forum/ad...825#post356825

Also, I notice you have your head piezo mounted to the crossbar with the foam covering the entire bottom of the piezo. Although it isn't an absolute rule, generally on Roland builds people use a layer or two of foam 2 sided tape (disks) about the size of the piezo ceramic on the bottom of the head piezo. That allows the head piezo to move/flex a little more. But before doing any physical changes to your build I would definitely look into fine tuning the trigger parameters.

Oh, and you are testing your pad with the head on right? Because you can't really test it correctly by tapping on the piezos with the head off and expect to find out much...... the head zone will always be consistent tapping on it, but since the head piezo must also be stimulated along with the rim piezo for the rimshot depth/velocity, tapping directly on the rim piezo will be hit or miss ..... gotta have the pad assembled to test correctly .... J