Does size matter?

[wbrs]

Do smaller drums trigger better?

[Swaledale]

No, if they get too small you can't hit them

But seriously, if anything I find the larger cymbals tend to be more consistent at triggering. I also find the rim response on the mesh head pads better in the larger pads - but there's not much difference in the head trigger response (I'm referring to roland pads.... can't offer any opinion on other makes)

[wbrs]

why are most edrums smaller than adrums?

[JmanWord]

why are most edrums smaller than adrums?

With Edrums I can have the sound of a 40" gong from a 6" edrum.... a 16" floor tom from any size edrum..... With acoustic drums obviously the size of the drum affects the tone. Not so with edrums... the sounds are produced from the brain or samples and the pads are mearly triggers.

For those of us who enjoy the feel .... size of real A drums .... it is definitely possible to have that too.... excellent triggering with the look and feel of A's to boot...

Another reason Edrums are generally smaller is for easy transport and set up.

[snick59]

I think size does matter especially the snare. I just purchased a td-12 and the 10" snare just seems too small so I upgraded to a 12" I'm still getting used to the 8" toms. I just have the feeling that I'm playing on a toy kit. I personally feel the smallest drum should be a 10", what could the price difference really be to Roland?.. it's all about marketing. You know how to tell that size matters just look at any pro drummer playing e drums you don't see them playing 8"pads. Thats because they're not paying for them. But I do love the e drums for the quietness, the ability to have many different kits and for everything else JmanWord was saying.

[foofoo]

with rim triggers like the ddrum red shots and the pros it seems anything bigger than 14" size drums triggers like poop. forget about buzz rolls and way more ghost notes. the cross bar method yielded similar results for me so id have to say size does matter.

[pluto3]

Well,after 22years size does not matter.Know your kit,trust your kit.After all you set it up.Id have to say no.

[rbressers]

Well, i've been playing for over 20 years now and for me size definitely matters. It's just a matter of your own preference.
I started out with a TD-6KX, but i couldn't get used to the small pads, so now everything has been swapped with PD-125's and PD-105's, just because of the size.
Well... actually it's the GAS that made me swap everything to a full TD-20 kit

[bogiesbad]

As evidenced by the above posts only the size of your bank account defintely matters...

[pchanning]

In terms of quality of triggering, bigger drums take more tweaking to get a good trigger response in my experience. Yes smaller is easier. YMMV. FWIW I use ddrum pro triggers on a mesh head kit and on an acoustic - same issues.

[rbressers]

I still laugh about the topic subject though . I wonder what my gf would say if she saw it

[Michael Render]

I have built a few bigger drums and have found that they are much harder to get a consistent trigger over the larger area. My eTaikos generally trigger well toward the center and fall off towards the edges. And because the are dual triggered, playing near the edge will sometimes trigger the rim. It takes a lot of tweaking to get them just right. And I have all but given up trying to get double strokes out of them. Of course, there is not much call for double strokes in Taiko music.

I have also found that the stiffer the head material, the more consistent the triggering. But that can be a big trade off. We all remember Simmons Hexagons and our painful wrists? Right?

[SuperPuss]

My recent e conversions have lead me to the same conclusions Michael, the most recent being my 22" E gong. It triggers quite accurately in the center and has a natural falloff towards the outside in much the same way an acoustic gong does. Where it gets tricky is with eliminating double triggering which gets more noticeable as you move away from the center.
For a gong, I don't need fast strokes either so it is a simple matter to tweak the mask time and retrigger cancel to totally eliminate double triggering. If this was a tom, it would be another story.
My 13" DIY Pearl floor tom triggers extremely well though but I think I'd start running into double triggering issues with anything larger than 14".

[JmanWord]

OK, I agree with Michael and SuperPuss on those specific examples of "XL drums" that would be more tricky to get even triggering from.... but just to clarify. I have done 3 acoustic kit conversions for myself, all with 14" dual zone snares and 16" dual zone toms, plus 22" kick drums. I have had absolutely 0 problems attaining the kind of triggering I want. I have come from stock monster V kits (starting with TD-10 Session, then TD-20BK) and from the start when changing from stock PD pads would not have stuck with these size drums if they were a trade off. The reason I reply to these kind of threads is because I hate to see people get spooked about using the standard drum size configurations for conversion. I wouldn't want anything less than 14" for my main snare.... I'm too spoiled at this point.

I even made a point in a couple of the demo vids I did to address the 14" and 16" triggering because of the negative posts I see in the DIY section from time to time about 14" or 16" triggering ...... It is very apparent that "results will vary!"

This is a long vid, so if you feel like downloading, right click and save to your PC.... At about 5 min. in ... to about 5 min. 40 seconds I demo the 14" snare and 16" floor tom.... J

http://www.weblogimages.com/dajmando/Acrylic%20Acoustic%20Evolution%20Blues%20May%202007.wmv

[daveybabes]

Evening ...

I think the triggering issue on larger drums is all down to the quality and sensitivity of the foam trigger. I think a Roland cone or a similar precise engineered foam stack like Jman's poron have the perfect qualities and sensitivity to create a balance in the 2 extremes, edge and centre. Anything else is like trying to swat a fly with a baseball bat.