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This is buried in my lengthy DIY thread and thought I'd post it here as a separate topic. With the exception of proposing some new slang "schucking piezos" none of my other thoughts that popped in my head while completing my DIY were seemingly unique. But I found no other threads similar to this so I'm shooting for fame and fortune with this one! 
I couldn't come up with a clever catchy nickname for this. But it's simply a method for providing a DIY variable hihat by hiding the switch between the physical hihat cymbals. The end result is a full variable hihat just like you'd get with any other method using a sliding/rotating pot. But unlike the typical Beatnik project there's no project box, springs, or picture hanging wire required. So to that end it's cheaper as all you need is a $2k slider and spare metal to fashion the brackets.
Built and tested with the following:
* Crappy cheap-O Groove Percussion hihat stand
* Crappy cheap-O Groove Percussion 14" hihat cymbal pair
* Mouser 25k 30mm sliding pot part # 312-9100-25K
* Hand-built slider mounting bracket. Metal bracket bent and drilled to position the slider perpendicular as best as possible to the hihat plunger pole. Has to be bent back a bit to do this since you're screwing it to a concave hihat cymbal.
* Hand-built top hihat cymbal connecting bracket. Connects the top hihat movement to the slider actuating arm. Simple L-shaped bracket drilled for the top hat nut to pass through, and smaller holes to link to the sliding pot actuating arm.
* Brass wire twisted together to bind/link the connecting bracket to the slider arm.
* 3" expansion spring to provide a snappier hihat return as the Groove Percussion stand had absolutely no adjustability in that regard. Unsure if other stands do or not but the Groove Percussion stand was laggy and slow to push the top hat fully opened. Now it's snappy as can be. Pow! It's open. Zappity! Open. Kabam! Open.
* Alesis Trigger IO - cymbal piezo connected to input #3, slider connected to the hihat footpedal input
* Semi-related I've posted some other technical findings about the Trigger IO as it pertains specifically to the variable hihat here: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group...IO/message/109
As built and tested it provides full CC#4 = 0-127 articulation. Note that the Trigger IO uses CC#4 = 0 for full open, and CC#4 = 127 for full closed which I believe is ass backwards. But of course works fine with the included BFD LITE (and probably other BFD versions).
It's not pretty to look at due to my hand-built metal parts. I'm certainly no shopsmith. Parts were culled from my collection of random extra parts I have collected over the years from other projects, mostly as a homeowner. I think both were likely included with window blinds or something.
Onto the photos and my descriptions.
Closeup of my Franken-build. Shows the slider mounted to the bottom hat with the custom bracket, and the top bracket that connects the top hat to the slider. The various holes drilled in the top-hat bracket were to accommodate me finding the optimal position for the top-hat bracket to physically connect to the slider. Optimal position is to allow the hat to physically close all the way and reach CC#4=127 for fully closed. Setting the linkage wrong means you hit CC#4=127 before the hats physically close, or don't reach it at all. Linkage for the bracket and slider was done with some copper wire twisted tightly for a slackless linkage. I couldn't figure out some better linkage device though a small nut-and-bolt would work. Maybe a clevis bolt/pin combo. I'm sure there's something more elegant and professional looking but it works. Numbers 15 and 20 on the side of the slider indicate the Alesis Trigger IO XTALK value and where each value sets CC#4=127 for fully opened. Adjusting the XTALK value allows you to constrict the total hihat open/closed travel from 17-27mm based on my crude measurements.
Note you have to remember to put the retaining nut for the top hat on before you link the bracket to the slider arm. This is what physically holds the top bracket to the top hat. It gets sandwiched between the nut and felt washer. Again, the 3" spring pictured is just to force my hats open faster and has no bearing on the overall variable hihat function at all.
My piezo hard-wired to the jack in my bottom hat. Mildly annoying as due to the wire length I chose I have to remove the jack from the bottom hat whenever I take the top hat completely off. I'm sure there's a variety of remedies, namely not hard-wiring the piezo to the jack and using some quick-disconect in between. Which I'll probably never do.
All put together. No project box. No picture hanging wire. All hidden inside the hats. All you see is another cable connected to another jack on the bottom of the hats. Note to get the top hat onto the stand is a pain in the ass. You have to squeeze one meaty paw between the two cymbals and hold onto the bottom nut while threading top retaining bolt on. The gap between the two cymbals is small since you've now physically linked the top hat to the slider.
I welcome your comments, thoughts, criticism. Whatever you got I can take it.
UPDATE 12/29/08
My web host mysteriously lost all of my original photos, in addition to most of my edrum photos in general. Here's a few photos of my inside-the-hats slider implementation I've been using for a few months now.
Top hat bracket, with multi-hole plate glued on. Multi-holes gives you a variety of positions to link the top hat to the slider. My simplistic workaround to a truly adjustable linkage.
Side view of the slider mounted to the bottom bracket.
Front view of the slider mounted to the bottom bracket.
To connect the slider to the top bracket, I just tip the bottom hat slightly, which pitches the slider back and out of the way, move the slider arm to the top, lower the bottom hat, line up the slider arm with the appropriate hole, then tip the bottom hat back into position which inserts the slider arm fully into the hole.
Some issues I've encountered.
* The Trigger IO often freaks out when the slider moves past the lower bounds. What I mean is, once the Trigger IO calculates the pedal is fully closed if the pedal moves lower than that boundary the Trigger IO generates some wierd pedal output. I'm assuming this is a Trigger IO oddity.
* My entire hat spins slightly on the stand. I can't get the damn hats to lock onto the stand plunger so they rotate about 180 degrees over time. It's annoying.
* Very rarely the slider pops out of the top hat bracket. My original design used some twisted solid core copper wire as a poor mans cotter pin type lock to keep that from happening. But it negated the ability to re-position the slider in the holes so I deal with the slider arm popping out once in a while.
* The entire thing continues to work, nothing has failed or broken. Though admittedly I barely play my drums still. So maybe 10 hours of use tops.
* I haven't actually decided if this is functionally any better than a standard Beatnik type box mount and cable. Though I really dislike the idea of cables and springs from a longevity aspect.
* The main disadvantage to this method is you're limited in repositioning the hats in relation to the pedal with precision, you're limited to where the top hat bracket has holes. Move it to one hole and the hats may close before the pedal gets to fully closed position. The next hole down may let the hats close slightly after the pedal is fully closed. There's no real way to set it with absolute precision, though that may not matter depending on your VSTi chosen (BFD has full control over the CC values used for all transitions, S2 has none, AD has none since it doesn't use CC at all, etc.).
Pros and cons to everything. I'd think the real value to this method of linking the slider to the top hat movement instead of the pedal movement is that the slider is completely hidden, and that you have the ability to move the top hat via the clutch and have it impose physical limits to the maximum openness of the pedal performance due to limiting the slider movement via limiting top hat movement. It's unique in that aspect I think.
I couldn't come up with a clever catchy nickname for this. But it's simply a method for providing a DIY variable hihat by hiding the switch between the physical hihat cymbals. The end result is a full variable hihat just like you'd get with any other method using a sliding/rotating pot. But unlike the typical Beatnik project there's no project box, springs, or picture hanging wire required. So to that end it's cheaper as all you need is a $2k slider and spare metal to fashion the brackets.
Built and tested with the following:
* Crappy cheap-O Groove Percussion hihat stand
* Crappy cheap-O Groove Percussion 14" hihat cymbal pair
* Mouser 25k 30mm sliding pot part # 312-9100-25K
* Hand-built slider mounting bracket. Metal bracket bent and drilled to position the slider perpendicular as best as possible to the hihat plunger pole. Has to be bent back a bit to do this since you're screwing it to a concave hihat cymbal.
* Hand-built top hihat cymbal connecting bracket. Connects the top hihat movement to the slider actuating arm. Simple L-shaped bracket drilled for the top hat nut to pass through, and smaller holes to link to the sliding pot actuating arm.
* Brass wire twisted together to bind/link the connecting bracket to the slider arm.
* 3" expansion spring to provide a snappier hihat return as the Groove Percussion stand had absolutely no adjustability in that regard. Unsure if other stands do or not but the Groove Percussion stand was laggy and slow to push the top hat fully opened. Now it's snappy as can be. Pow! It's open. Zappity! Open. Kabam! Open.
* Alesis Trigger IO - cymbal piezo connected to input #3, slider connected to the hihat footpedal input
* Semi-related I've posted some other technical findings about the Trigger IO as it pertains specifically to the variable hihat here: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group...IO/message/109
As built and tested it provides full CC#4 = 0-127 articulation. Note that the Trigger IO uses CC#4 = 0 for full open, and CC#4 = 127 for full closed which I believe is ass backwards. But of course works fine with the included BFD LITE (and probably other BFD versions).
It's not pretty to look at due to my hand-built metal parts. I'm certainly no shopsmith. Parts were culled from my collection of random extra parts I have collected over the years from other projects, mostly as a homeowner. I think both were likely included with window blinds or something.
Onto the photos and my descriptions.
Closeup of my Franken-build. Shows the slider mounted to the bottom hat with the custom bracket, and the top bracket that connects the top hat to the slider. The various holes drilled in the top-hat bracket were to accommodate me finding the optimal position for the top-hat bracket to physically connect to the slider. Optimal position is to allow the hat to physically close all the way and reach CC#4=127 for fully closed. Setting the linkage wrong means you hit CC#4=127 before the hats physically close, or don't reach it at all. Linkage for the bracket and slider was done with some copper wire twisted tightly for a slackless linkage. I couldn't figure out some better linkage device though a small nut-and-bolt would work. Maybe a clevis bolt/pin combo. I'm sure there's something more elegant and professional looking but it works. Numbers 15 and 20 on the side of the slider indicate the Alesis Trigger IO XTALK value and where each value sets CC#4=127 for fully opened. Adjusting the XTALK value allows you to constrict the total hihat open/closed travel from 17-27mm based on my crude measurements.
Note you have to remember to put the retaining nut for the top hat on before you link the bracket to the slider arm. This is what physically holds the top bracket to the top hat. It gets sandwiched between the nut and felt washer. Again, the 3" spring pictured is just to force my hats open faster and has no bearing on the overall variable hihat function at all.
My piezo hard-wired to the jack in my bottom hat. Mildly annoying as due to the wire length I chose I have to remove the jack from the bottom hat whenever I take the top hat completely off. I'm sure there's a variety of remedies, namely not hard-wiring the piezo to the jack and using some quick-disconect in between. Which I'll probably never do.
All put together. No project box. No picture hanging wire. All hidden inside the hats. All you see is another cable connected to another jack on the bottom of the hats. Note to get the top hat onto the stand is a pain in the ass. You have to squeeze one meaty paw between the two cymbals and hold onto the bottom nut while threading top retaining bolt on. The gap between the two cymbals is small since you've now physically linked the top hat to the slider.
I welcome your comments, thoughts, criticism. Whatever you got I can take it.
UPDATE 12/29/08
My web host mysteriously lost all of my original photos, in addition to most of my edrum photos in general. Here's a few photos of my inside-the-hats slider implementation I've been using for a few months now.
Top hat bracket, with multi-hole plate glued on. Multi-holes gives you a variety of positions to link the top hat to the slider. My simplistic workaround to a truly adjustable linkage.
Side view of the slider mounted to the bottom bracket.
Front view of the slider mounted to the bottom bracket.
To connect the slider to the top bracket, I just tip the bottom hat slightly, which pitches the slider back and out of the way, move the slider arm to the top, lower the bottom hat, line up the slider arm with the appropriate hole, then tip the bottom hat back into position which inserts the slider arm fully into the hole.
Some issues I've encountered.
* The Trigger IO often freaks out when the slider moves past the lower bounds. What I mean is, once the Trigger IO calculates the pedal is fully closed if the pedal moves lower than that boundary the Trigger IO generates some wierd pedal output. I'm assuming this is a Trigger IO oddity.
* My entire hat spins slightly on the stand. I can't get the damn hats to lock onto the stand plunger so they rotate about 180 degrees over time. It's annoying.
* Very rarely the slider pops out of the top hat bracket. My original design used some twisted solid core copper wire as a poor mans cotter pin type lock to keep that from happening. But it negated the ability to re-position the slider in the holes so I deal with the slider arm popping out once in a while.
* The entire thing continues to work, nothing has failed or broken. Though admittedly I barely play my drums still. So maybe 10 hours of use tops.
* I haven't actually decided if this is functionally any better than a standard Beatnik type box mount and cable. Though I really dislike the idea of cables and springs from a longevity aspect.
* The main disadvantage to this method is you're limited in repositioning the hats in relation to the pedal with precision, you're limited to where the top hat bracket has holes. Move it to one hole and the hats may close before the pedal gets to fully closed position. The next hole down may let the hats close slightly after the pedal is fully closed. There's no real way to set it with absolute precision, though that may not matter depending on your VSTi chosen (BFD has full control over the CC values used for all transitions, S2 has none, AD has none since it doesn't use CC at all, etc.).
Pros and cons to everything. I'd think the real value to this method of linking the slider to the top hat movement instead of the pedal movement is that the slider is completely hidden, and that you have the ability to move the top hat via the clutch and have it impose physical limits to the maximum openness of the pedal performance due to limiting the slider movement via limiting top hat movement. It's unique in that aspect I think.
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