adding more cymbals and pads to a td-10exp

[drumlogic]

I have the vsession kit and currently bought two single piezo visulites(splash and china). Since I am only using 2 of the ride zones I had aux 1 free. Now aux 1 and 2 are used by the visulites however, I need to add more splash's and one more roland cy-14 crash. Correct me if I'm wrong but you can only grail when one of the two pads being grailed together have an fsr trigger.
In the vsession kit the only fsr triggers are in the v-cymbals, which already triggers a rim and head sound per cymbal. Do I have any thing left to grail with? All my other triggers are single piezo. The only thing I can come up with is to stereo split the piezo trigger in the vcymbals with a few 10 inch splashs, which leaves me with same sound just in two from two different locations(triggers). Can grailing still help me? Have you found a way to grail two differnt piezos because I have 4 pd-100's and a kd-120 that I am not using the rim triggers on.

Any input feefer?

-drumlogic

[drumlogic]

chris,
Thanks again for the info. Your right I dont really want to start messing with synth patches..yet. Also I would like to keep my equipment down to as few components as possible. I just got my visulite 2 cymbals, both single piezo's, and am using them normally on the two aux ports. I will be buying a chokeable crash soon and then will try grailing it to one of the aux ports. I'll keep you posted as I go.

-Drumlogic

[drumlogic]

yes, it absolutely makes sense, and I have to admit that I did read about this. But Im not exaggerating when I say that I have read literally hundreds of posts in the past week or so and some of them are so similar but for other applications that I scanned alot of them and didn't fully understand them at the time that I was reading them. Now I have a much better understanding but can't remember where I saw alot of the info and cant bear searching any more. So, I know it must be annoying but, I really like to ask very specific questions like: Can this pad work with this cymbal on this module when connected like that. I can read old posts and try to hypothesize how my equipment may work analogously to yours but thats making alot of assumptions which may not be accurate because, as you've stated, each pad is slightly different and it is these difference's that help us to reach our goal. Anyway, I was happy to hear that i could still choke my fsr piezo, as i was intending to use this as a crash. I think Im gonna be purchasing those other fsr/piezo visulite crashes(14/16) in the next couple days, after I evaluate the (10/18)splash and china im getting in like a day or so. Now these techniques require you to have some technical ability and time to tweak settings, aside from the money it will cost, why wouldn't you buy like a td-5(seen for $300 refurbished) and connect 8 more pads to it, and midi out into the td-10exp for the high quality sounds. Are there drawbacks to doing that like latency or something?

-Drumlogic

[drumlogic]

If you do use (2) FSR/piezo pads (as I do), it will work fine, but the FSR that has the Shack Adapter plugged into it's pad will provide no choking function. I refer to this in the older 'Holy Grail' thread when explaining the concept of the 'master' and 'slave' pad

***What if I use a single piezo and a piezo/fsr pad together and put the shack adapter on the piezo pad. Would this enable the choking function in the fsr trigger???

[drumlogic]

Chris,

Thanks for the info. My first intented application of holy grailing was to add 4 visulite cymbals to the the 2 aux ports. But I just read that best results are obtained when using a single-piezo and an fsr/piezo trigger per input. I will be recieving my first two (10in crash/spalsh and 18in china) in like 3 days. The 10in is not chokeable. Do you think that if I got my next two cymbals with the choking option I would make grailing them, in sets of:single-piezo and fsr/pizeo per aux input, alot easier and effective? When I get them, I'm going to try grailing the two singles together and I'll keep posted as to my progress throughout. Unless you know of someone who already tried this and have some triggering tips to get me going. The other settings you gave me were critical in my recent experiments.

Thanx,
-Drumlogic

[AkristaK]

Feef you have been a great resource for the "grail trick" I have been toying around with this for about a year now. This is what I've found:

1. Pintech TC cymbals do not work very well with the grailing technique. (i.e. you cannot "shack adapt" 2 Pintech cymbals to one TD-10EX and get 2 seperate sounds and have them trigger accuratley.)

2. Even when using 2 PD-100's and shacking them together I have never achieved more than an a 80% success rate. Hence I don't use the shack technique for recording, since I cannot rely on an 80% success rate.

Feefer, my question to you is how reliable is your current set-up using 15 pads? Do you have to adjust your playing to acount for how hard you hit each pad? What is your success rate for having that many pads "grailed" together.

[drumlogic]

Chris,

Excellent Information!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just before I read your post I had taken a step back from trying to grail two seperate pd-100's and tried to attain shacking. I wasnt having much luck until I went back to this message board and saw your reccomendation for the P7A trigger setting and .8 scantime. This seems to work really well. I havent got to tweak it yet but i am begining to see the potential here. Very Kool. I was able to trigger both head and rim sounds from a single pd-100 dependent on my strike velocity. Grailing is not far away. Any more tips? I love this stuff.

-drumlogic

PS Thank you very much for your help so far. If I were doing this myself from scrath I would have given up already based on the frustraton associated with tweaking a module for hours at a time. I have pretty much been hibernating with this module for the past couple days. My girlfriend is ready to file a missing persons report.

[drumlogic]

chris,
I was wondering if you know of many people who have accomplished this using a pd-100 or pd-120. Forgive me if it was stated somewhere in another post but i've been spending alot of time tinkering with the trigger settings. Do you have any tips for people grailing the inputs of a td-10 with pd-100's or pd-120's. I have them both triggering the head sound and cannot get either one to trigger the rim sound(I have only tried tom inputs so far). I would appreciate any trigger setting or tips you have to help get me started. Thank You.

-Drumlogic

[Ken Taylor]

Feefer,
The solution I have proposed detects all hits from soft to hard it is not for layering and allows another drum to be assigned (attached) to a rim input.
As for the bias voltage this is dropped across a 6.8K resistor so as long as a resistor of this value is used in your projects no damage would be done to the unit.

Ken.

[drumlogic]

Chris,
Thanks for the links, they were quite helpful. I made the shack adapter and y stereo splitter necessary for "grailing" inputs. I haven't had much time to play with it yet but I understand the concept now. However, do you fully understand electrically whats taken place when you "backfeed" and decive the fsr trigger sensor. Does this have an effect on it's Mean Time Before Failure(MTBF). Have you noticed any irrational behavior from your td-10 after doing so? Is this backfed voltage also seen across the piezo, if so, wouldn't that adversely affect the longevity of the piezo? I am eager to start toying with this thing, but I am always weary about using device's (especially highly sensitive triggers) outside of their manufacturers specifications.

Very interesting so far.

-Drumlogic

[Ken Taylor]

In some ways the FSR description is misleading when refering to the dual inputs.
One is truly Piezo using tip and lower sleeve the other is more like a membrane 'switch'.(This is ring and lower sleeve ) When the outer rim of a PD9 is hit it momemtarily closes this switch. At this point software in the TD10 detects this and if the switch is closed for just a few milliseconds it is assumed to be a Rim 'strike', volume on the rim strike (how loud it should sound) is taken from the piezo which would normally be supplying center sounds. If the switch is closed for longer than a few milliseconds (As in when you squeeze the rim) the TD10 detects this as a "choke" and duly sends a midi choke to damp the sound. So when you strike the pad center only the main sound is heard and as no rim switch is set, then strike volume and position are read much as in the PD120 /100 pads.
Anyone wishing to use the FSR input with a Piezo needs to buy a simple Sound switch kit these are available in the UK so I'm sure that Radio shack or the like will supply them. These are normally used to switch on a device from a handclap or tap and employ a Piezo. They can be set to turn on this switch for just a millisecond or so using the correct value of resistor. now you have made the 'virtual' membrane switch close momentarily from a strike you must employ another piezo wired in parallel with the tip and sleeve but attached to the same drum you have used for the 'FSR' input otherwise the TD10 will not know how loud to be.
Those of you who have access to electronic project books should also be able to find this sort of thing (usually a couple of OP amps) and make it for themselves.

Ken.

[drumlogic]

chris,
I have read alot of posts concerning shacking and holy grail. I also have an in-depth understanding of transmission lines/piezo's and signals processing in general. I am just not completely familiar with the td-10 and do not want to do any experimentation that could result in damage to my module. If you could sum up shacking and holy grailing in one post I think alot of "NEWBIES" and other v-drummers would find this most helpful. Furthermore, you could direct people with questions(and there seems to be a whole ****load of us who don't understand this yet, not just newbies) to a specific post with all this information included. After all isnt that the point of this discussion forum, to advance the knowledge and performance of all v-drummers who visit this, not just the ilete. So please, instead of directing me and all the other v-drummers to inconsistent and misinformative posts, once and for all put your wealth of knowledge into one post that is current, technical and accurate. This way we dont have to deal with misinformation and you could make life alot easier for alot of v-drummers. And just think, every couples weeks or so, when another v-drummers asks the same question we did you can respond with a hyperlink to a post with all the infromation he/she will ever need about shacking and grailing inputs.

Thank You,
-Drumlogic

PS Make it as long as you want I promise I will definitely read the whole thing.

[Traps]

Originally posted by feefer:


Putting this info. together in a sequential fashion so any V-Drum newbie could understand would require starting with the basics of e-drum triggering (piezo vs FSR), progressing to what TD module settings REALLY do (e.g. the names of trigger settings are really misleading, I think), and then explaining what functions these settings provide when you're 'Shack Adapting'.

It's a rather large topic, requiring alot of time to put into a document. Even then, there's no guarantee people will have the interest or desire or capability to RTFD.

Personally, I'd pay $ to demonstrate my desire to gain that knowledge. It would be akin to having another reference manual, but written by someone who actually uses the product and is selflessly trying to empower the rest of us.



[This message has been edited by Traps (edited July 13, 2001).]

[drumlogic]

OK, I did some experimenting today and here is what i found. I went to radio shack and bought a 1/4inch stereo male to (2) 1/4inch mono female adapter. This will seperate the left and right stereo channels. I dont know if this is the godly "shack adapter" that everyone is talking about because no one ever technically explained what exactly that is. Anyway, i tried splitting the kick, tom, crash, and aux inputs with no luck. I connected a pd-100 tom to each mono input. I believe that a pd-100 uses a single piezo trigger. I used these because i would like to trigger 4 single piezo cymbals(visulites) off of my two aux inputs(2 per input). I have not toyed around with trigger settings, scantime, x-talk etc, as i am new at this and dont want to mess anything up. This leads me to conclude that the tom/kick/crash/aux inputs are all piezo/fsr dual input triggers and cannot be used to trigger two single and seperate piezo triggers. I really hope I'm wrong about this because for $5,000 this thing should wash my car, clean my room, and DEFINITELY trigger two single piezos per input. Will one of the resident experts please help us here!!!!!!!!!!!

[JoeKool]

I am with you guys on this. I am buying a set tomorrow, and I will be doing some testing myself. I have read a lot of the posts as well, and for some reason, it just is not clicking with me. Hopefully, once I get one of these things in my hands, it will all start to make sense.

If I get anywhere, I will post it, and try to be a little more technical. Feefer is the expert here, and he has done quite a bit of research. If anything, he has paved the way.

JoeKool