Hi Hat Pedal problems?

[stick4Him]

Little by little over the last 2 monthe when I hit my HH pad and my foot is down on the pedal an open sound occurs. It became so bad this weekend, that before a performance I had to change to a voice with a closed HH sound on the center and open on the edge. I use Yamaha PCY-80s pads for all cymbals.

I have switched out cables on pedal/pad with no luck. I'm thinking now that something mechanical has slowly deteriorated over the time period and has finally given out all together. Do this sound right? I'm going to guitar center with my pedal to try to see if their demo kits react the same way with my pedal. The pedal is only a couple of years old.

Has anyone else experienced this? If it is the pedal, can I repair it?

s4H

[DJourg]

S4H:

I've had this problem. I told Boismenu all about it in the General Forum; thread titled 'Noisy FD-7'. I am going to post an additional reply today, so it should be near the top of the list.

DJourg

[R27789]

I've had this "OPEN" hihat problem you described.
To fix it, just disconnected the cable connected the the "control" part of the FD7.
and reconnect and problem went away.
Since you've mentioned you've already done that, it could be due to the mechanical strength of the connectors inside the pedal, not gripping the plug properly, or some connection problems inside the pedal's circuits, solder cracking, etc.

Fon

[R27789]

To fix the mechanical strength of the connectors, you may need to open up the pedal
and use sharp objects to bend back those clips. If problem persists, check your wires and solders inside. I've had much problems with those connectors and solders especially in the KD7 triggers.

[stick4Him]

Wow!

Thanks for all your replies! It seems like I've got some careful surgery to do. I'm now pretty convinced that it is something mechanical in side the pedal. A new one can be $200, so I definitely will be attempting to fix it myself. I let you know the results. It won't be soon though... I've got a pretty time intensive work,family,school schedule going on recently.

[stick4Him]

Well I finally got to Guitar Center. I spent 15 minutes trying to duplicate the problem. I was able to for only about 1 minute. (?) The rest of the time my hi hat pedal worked just fine.

When I got home it seemed to work OK too. Still thinking it's mechanically related to the pedal I wiggled the input jack some and duplicated the open sound as my foot was down. But the more I messed with it the harder it was to duplicate! (?!) It just seemed to heal itself. Somethings going on inside that I don'quite understand yet. I'm not going to open it up until there's a hard failure to look for. My day job requires alot of electro/mechanical work, so I feel confident in that approach. Thanks again for your insightful post and especially what to watch out for when taking this pedal apart.

[DJourg]

That's funny. It is truly odd how some things repair themselves. When I first had this problem, all I did was open up the front housing and clean it out (dust)...I really had no idea what to do to fix it. I reassembled it, tried it out, and it worked fine. Probably the handling of the unit -- I had to put it on its side, upside down, and other motions required to dissassemble it -- simply readjusted the key component which was causing the problem.

But as I stated before, its come back. Time to open it up again...

DJourg

[TomLandin]

Yeah I know what you all mean. We Mechanical Engineers had a special class in this called 'Get a Bigger Hammer 101.'

[Bill Fedorko]

I just had the same problem. I opened up the pedal and found that gunk had accumultated on top of the plastic FSR strip (Force Sensitive Resistor) that the arch shaped arm squeezes to let the TD-10 know where you are in terms of open or closed hat. I carefully cleaned the dirty greasy gunk off it with a paper towel and it worked fine last practice. I think that any dirt, gunk and or other debries between the FSR and the arch arm can cause the FSR to be non-uniformly pressed on and create the problem.

Be careful in there. Hope this helps.

Bill

[stick4Him]

For anyone who has had this problem, a nondrummer at my work had a suggestion that could potentially work. After everything is working again, use a permanent male plug adapter that always stays plugged into the female input to the hi-hat. You connection from whatever drum brain you use gets plugged into a female plug, which is the other end of this adapter.

If you haul your kit around,1-2 times a week for me, this could reduce the plugging/unplugging wear factor. It also eliminates an entrance for dirt, since the female HH is always plugged.

[ToBiMaN]

I had that problem with the FD7, some days it worked great, some days it made me crazy...

I found that one of the pins of the female plug became separated from the little circuit-board into the FD7, so I soldered it again and everything worked well since then...

[Jonny]

My high-hat pedal has to be pressed down pretty hard to get the closed sound.

This is ever since the TD-10 replaced my TD-7Turbo.

I'll open it up, but this is strange.