First time out (nightmare)

[Mick]

Well I played the V- Concert set out for the first time Fri. night, it was BAD!! The symbols were awful, drums muddy. And LOTS of cross talk and false triggers Sat. night was GOOD used my dynasonic snare and acoustic symbols tweaked a few settings I’m going to fill the rack up with Styrofoam peanuts for starters as was suggested in another post, I wonder if I will ever get the symbols to sound right, will the expansion card make all the difference in the world? Any settings that I can use to improve the sound of the snare and the response some times it would just not be there when I hit it. And the cross talk and false triggers between the PD9 rims and pad has to be dealt with
Thanks any help or link on these problems would be much appreciated.
Mick

[Steveo the Devo]

Originally posted by Mick:
will the expansion card make all the difference in the world?

Expansion card goes good. Cymbals improved 100%

As for the rest of your problems, I would suggest playing around with the trigger settings in the Setup menu. Things that will help inparticular will be scan time, retrigger cancel, mask time, threshold and sensitivity (which is just about all of them!). It always helps if you can get a consistent mistrigger in order to isolate the problem but this often doesn't happen. Sorry I can't be more help.

Luck.

[hmasing]

Originally posted by Steveo the Devo:
Expansion card goes good. Cymbals improved 100%

Amen, brother.

Originally posted by Steveo the Devo:
As for the rest of your problems, I would suggest playing around with the trigger settings in the Setup menu. Things that will help inparticular will be scan time, retrigger cancel, mask time, threshold and sensitivity (which is just about all of them!). It always helps if you can get a consistent mistrigger in order to isolate the problem but this often doesn't happen. Sorry I can't be more help.

Also note that playing live is VERY different than playing in rehearsals, even with the band. For example, setting your drum on a riser that catches the bass amps can cause false triggering. I had a hard time with my high-hat pad (before I switched back to accoustic hats for feel), since it would double/triple trigger all the time. Turned out that I had to change my mask time, since the vibration of the stage and riser caused by my bass foot would set off the hat. My first two or three gigs weren't the best, but now I am NEVER going back to my accoustics.

I'll bet that if you got all new accoustics, you would have problems the first gig out, too. Lugs not tight, slipping stands, etc. It's all the same. Unfamiliar gear. Good luck!

- Hans

[Jimmy C]

Well, in a fit of stupidity I forgot to bring my rug to the gig last Saturday . Naturally, the stage area had a wood floor and I had to deal with the sliding hi-hat/bass drum syndrome and I also had major false triggers caused from the vibrations coming from the bass rig. The settings on my ddrum kit were optimized for a nicely padded & carpeted floor (like at rehearsal). Anyway, it took a simple two minute adjustment to get rid of the false triggers, but man - I won't be forgetting a rug again anytime soon

[jrcel]

That's kind of the problem with pads that use a membrane, the membrane goes crazy with every vibration. Try getting a cheap trigger, plug it into an imput on the TD10, place the sensor on the center of the rack, assign it to "off" as the note number, if you can, I'm not sure. Play around with the crosstalk and threshold paramaters to see if you can use them to control the noise floor. Otherwise you're just going to have to raise the threshold on all your pads.

[studioVjeff]

A Rubber Mat works best for vibration reduction.......

Jeff

[LatexBrain]

About the cymbals. I have the V-Session kit w/the expansion board installed. The cymbal response is much better. However, I still use my acoustic cymbals. Nothing beats the feeling of being surrounded by the sound of real cymbals. It makes me & my front man just plain feel compfortable. When playing a medium to large hall,w/good sound, make sure the sound guy throws up a couple of ambient mics to bring the cymbal levels up to the output levels of the V's. The croud will thank you.

[Stixx777]

Some of the problems with playing live with the V's is that different equipment sounds different. I just played a gig with the drum monitors sounding like crap. The first set I was struggling with the sound but you get used to it. The drums sounded fine out front and great on tape but the sound coming from the monitor was aweful. I had to get rid of all the ambience and FX to get the snare sounding good not to mention changing shell depth the board they used had no mids. With the V's it is an easy and quick adjustment that with acoustis would have taken longer to correct. I will say it again the V's just plain rock. I reloaded the old settings back with the card when I got back home so it is back to normal in just a matter of seconds.

------------------
Ted H.
www.tocsinrocks.com

[gingerbaker]

Dear Mick,

Reread your post and had some ideas that might help - Man,IMO, if you have to bring an acoustic snare and cymbals, why use the V's ?

1) You should'nt need too fill your rack with peanuts to avoid crosstalk problems - with a carpet underneath and proper settings as described above, it'll be fine.

2)Cymbals "awful" - first, the TDW-1 will help all sounds ( not just cymbals) and all dynamics tremendously.

When playing live, one hits harder than usual. This means you will be maxing out the cymbal signal. Many cymbal sounds, I have found, sound much better when hit so they don't max out.

I have to adjust the sensitivity settings for my cymbals when playing out to avoid this; turning down the sensitivity so I must hit a little harder to get the same output.

At the same time, however, I turn the volume of the cymbals up quite high, and hit them relatively softly. This way they sound more real, and leaves much more headroom for dynamics.

3) Muddy toms, snare not there

Watch sensitivity, dynamics issues as above.

Use the EQ and reverb settings on the individual voices, while playing thru the same speakers going to front-of-house a/or your monitor.

EQ can make an enormous difference, certainly with cymbals. You get two selectable tuning points, I use them to add deep body and shimmer.

3A) Muddy toms

This is a red-flag to me. The toms from the TD-10 are very good, from the TDW-1 they are amazing! If your toms sound muddy, something is wrong somewhere in the P.A.

Maybe they are being overcompressed, the EQ is off, maybe the board is getting a weak signal. Somethings up here.

3B) Snare sounds lousy and is missing hits.

First off, a properly tuned mesh head will not miss hits, unless there is a big missetting of the crosstalk perameters. (Search under cross talk - there have been some really good threads on how to solve these problems)

Make sure the mesh heads are tuned up tight enough - see manual. When I experience a missed hit now, I know its time to tune up the head again!

While the TDW-1 snares are great, the stock snares, I think, can be made to sound really good, at least for rock, pop, etc, I'm not so sure about jazz....

Again its a matter of tweaking heads, etc and using the EQ and reverb settings, and doing it through the speakers you will actually use live.

Hope this post wasn't too redundant or simplistic. Good Luck!

[Steveo the Devo]

Originally posted by gingerbaker:
Man,IMO, if you have to bring an acoustic snare and cymbals, why use the V's ?

I use the V's for toms and percussion only, all acoustic cymbals, snare and also I use an acoustic kick drum to trigger the v kick sound (mix the sounds at FOH). I have used every possible combination of V's and A's over the years and this set up is perfect for my needs. The reasons that anyone would use this set up?
1. A-cymbals have an expressive ability far beyond the bounds of any v-cymbals (bring on the flames!)
2. Stage presence, far more than any kick arse monitor system (bring 'em on I said!)
3. Aesthetics - people love to see real cymbals - I agree with them
4. Pearl Masters Series

While I don't want to start a fight here, but what's the point of having the 'I'm a full electronic drummer and your not if you use acoustics' attitude. Surely there is different strokes for different folks. What works for you may not work for me, I love my setup, I hope you love yours just as much.

Just my $0.02

[gingerbaker]

Steveo,

You know, your setup does sound better than straight E's or straight A's for that matter.

Let's face it, particularly for cymbals, the E's have a long way to go.

In fact, I don't dispute anything you said. (Especially before my morning cup of tea.)Indeed, I sold my Pearl Master Sessions to afford the Rolands.

For me , though, going stage silent was very important. I play rock mostly. Having a 140 db snare and high-hat 1 foot away from my ears was killing my hearing.

Also, I use fat sticks, and have big, heavy arms, and my stage volume on everything was pushing up the band's volume level. The V's fixed that too.

So, for me, I'm still working on getting the best sounds out of the electronic kit, in the perhaps quixotic hope I can emulate what you are bringing to the stage.

I'm willing to compromise a tad on the sound and expressiveness of the kit for the forementioned benefits. For rock, pop, funk it's not a big deal to me.

Probably should have phrased the "why use the V's..." thing better. Not trying to have an attitude about it. Well, not on this subject anyway.

[Jimmy C]

I am using an accoustic HH and ride (both miked for in-ear monitoring) and using cheapo Pintech TC crashes w/ my ddrum4. I use to use all accoustic cymbals but right now, this is the best combination for me. Using e-crashes still gives me the flexbility to change sounds and the acoustic HH and ride give me the real feel where I need it most. I also use the ride for cymbal chokes, when needed...(the Pintech TC's aren't chokable )

[Steveo the Devo]

GB, sorry I didn't mean to sound so harsh. I can understand where you are coming from now. As I said, so long as it works for you then that is cool.
Peace.

[Mick]

Played out last night using A&E cymbals and the e-crash’s were ok still need to tweak a little,
The ride was good, the bell sound worked really well, the HH well I’m going to give it one more try
It’s really unpredictable, I play double base and use my heal on the HH and also left handed, not that it has anything to do with it, I really love the ease and the sound of the drums Im never going back to A-drums and for those that don't have a BBE GET ONE!! a loudness button BUT MORE.

Mick

[Steveo the Devo]

Originally posted by Mick:
Im never going back to A-drums

Mick, if you haven't already done so, I would go and have a good read of the current 'Are your V-drums becoming uninspiring' thread (General Forum).
Never say never....