Greetings,
The other day I received my set of v-cymbals. For the most part, I consider it money well spent. I like the crash and the ride, although I wish the ride came in 16" or even 18" diameters. The cymbals are heavy, but at least they swing. The rim triggers require a good aim, but they're much easier to trigger than the rims on my PD-7's, although I had to bump up the scan time to isolate the rim sounds from the bow sounds and get rid of some weird "thrashing noise" near the rim of the ride. Using my TD-8, I prefer the bow/rim config over the bow/bell config on the ride, since the bell seems to require a harder hit and produces more stick noise than the rim.
Now for the things I'm not so happy with. First, the lug nuts on the "pivot spacer" (the V-shaped cylindrical metal piece which the cymbals rest on so they can swing back and forth) are "non-standard", i.e. you can't use a normal T-shaped drum lug to tighten them. At first I thought they were stripped, but then I realized it's just Mr. Roland putting on his obligatory display of incompetence (there's always *something* fishy about every Roland edrum product). But it's not that big of a deal. And for how much the cymbals cost, I think they should be able to swing in every direction (not just north/south) and rotate 360 degrees. But again, I can deal with this.
Now here's my real problem. The hi-hat tracks well near the center (bell), but move a few inches off-center and it starts to miss hits when playing "rolls" (I am still new to drumming and don't know the term for this), you know, when you hit "once" and let it bounce a few times producing a quick series of 3 or 4 triggers. The ride does not have this problem at all, presumably because the ride unit is lighter and thinner thus more responsive. I notice that harder hits on the hat sometimes track correctly, but I am a relatively light-hitter (threshold:0, sensitivity:10). The other pads suit my playing style just fine, but the hi-hat does not. I have messed with every single trigger setting the TD-8 has with no success. It seems like the TD-8's range of threshold is not wide enough to accomodate the CY-12H pad. Finally, the rim of the hat is very noisy (ugly-sounding even) and requires a much harder hit than the rims on the crash or the ride, making it just about useless for me.
Now, yesterday I took a nice trip to Mars in Orlando (actully it wasn't that nice -- traffic sucks in the city and I have no tolerance for traffic) and played on their v-session for a bit. I brought my CY-12H, but the bastard wouldn't let me switch it out for testing (apparently it takes them 3 months of hard labor to configure each edrum kit, and they don't want to lose all that hard work for nothing). Anyway, the hi-hat on the v-session *did* have the same problem, but not to the same extent as with my TD-8. I was satisfied after tweaking some of the trigger settings on the TD-10. At home, I switched out the hi-hat for one of my PD-7's (I was previously using a PD-100 for hi-hat which worked quite nicely except for the hot spot), and I noticed the same effect with tracking near the rim, but not quite so obvious.
So, what should I make of all this? Is it just a fault in the product that I'll have to deal with, or is my CY-12H defective, or am I missing something important on the trigger parameters? Thanks to everybody for your help -- the last 6 months (both with and without the drums) have been a great learning experience.
The other day I received my set of v-cymbals. For the most part, I consider it money well spent. I like the crash and the ride, although I wish the ride came in 16" or even 18" diameters. The cymbals are heavy, but at least they swing. The rim triggers require a good aim, but they're much easier to trigger than the rims on my PD-7's, although I had to bump up the scan time to isolate the rim sounds from the bow sounds and get rid of some weird "thrashing noise" near the rim of the ride. Using my TD-8, I prefer the bow/rim config over the bow/bell config on the ride, since the bell seems to require a harder hit and produces more stick noise than the rim.
Now for the things I'm not so happy with. First, the lug nuts on the "pivot spacer" (the V-shaped cylindrical metal piece which the cymbals rest on so they can swing back and forth) are "non-standard", i.e. you can't use a normal T-shaped drum lug to tighten them. At first I thought they were stripped, but then I realized it's just Mr. Roland putting on his obligatory display of incompetence (there's always *something* fishy about every Roland edrum product). But it's not that big of a deal. And for how much the cymbals cost, I think they should be able to swing in every direction (not just north/south) and rotate 360 degrees. But again, I can deal with this.
Now here's my real problem. The hi-hat tracks well near the center (bell), but move a few inches off-center and it starts to miss hits when playing "rolls" (I am still new to drumming and don't know the term for this), you know, when you hit "once" and let it bounce a few times producing a quick series of 3 or 4 triggers. The ride does not have this problem at all, presumably because the ride unit is lighter and thinner thus more responsive. I notice that harder hits on the hat sometimes track correctly, but I am a relatively light-hitter (threshold:0, sensitivity:10). The other pads suit my playing style just fine, but the hi-hat does not. I have messed with every single trigger setting the TD-8 has with no success. It seems like the TD-8's range of threshold is not wide enough to accomodate the CY-12H pad. Finally, the rim of the hat is very noisy (ugly-sounding even) and requires a much harder hit than the rims on the crash or the ride, making it just about useless for me.
Now, yesterday I took a nice trip to Mars in Orlando (actully it wasn't that nice -- traffic sucks in the city and I have no tolerance for traffic) and played on their v-session for a bit. I brought my CY-12H, but the bastard wouldn't let me switch it out for testing (apparently it takes them 3 months of hard labor to configure each edrum kit, and they don't want to lose all that hard work for nothing). Anyway, the hi-hat on the v-session *did* have the same problem, but not to the same extent as with my TD-8. I was satisfied after tweaking some of the trigger settings on the TD-10. At home, I switched out the hi-hat for one of my PD-7's (I was previously using a PD-100 for hi-hat which worked quite nicely except for the hot spot), and I noticed the same effect with tracking near the rim, but not quite so obvious.
So, what should I make of all this? Is it just a fault in the product that I'll have to deal with, or is my CY-12H defective, or am I missing something important on the trigger parameters? Thanks to everybody for your help -- the last 6 months (both with and without the drums) have been a great learning experience.
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