Issues with double triggering and positional sensing

[tehnick]

Hey all,

I'm new to the forums, new to electronic drums, and am trying to work out some kinks with my setup. I have decided that the best way for me to approach this is to focus on one drum at a time and get it dialed in, then use that knowledge to apply to the next one until everything is good. Let me give you a background on what I am working with...

I am using UFO Ebridge triggers in an A2E conversion. I have verified that the head tension is good and tight. Before installing the heads, I used a ruler to make sure that the top of the cone was above the bearing edge. I wasn't able to measure exact height, but if I lay a yardstick edge down across the drum and move it to the cone and over the top, it will move the cone slightly and allow the ruler to skim across the surface with a little bit of friction from the cone. The problem is that I am not sure if the height is too low. I know that it does go above the bearing edge on all drums but I don't know if I need to make adjustments there in terms of double triggering or positional sensing.

Right now I am getting double triggering on my snare and on my kick in my testing. I have only tested those two drums so far. I have a center mounted piezo on the snare with a rim zone piezo and the kick piezo is off center to the right of the beater. I also notice that when I try to set positional sensing on the snare, I don't seem to be able to get any indication of the hit location like I have seen in the video Rob posted and I think my hotspot suppression is still a bit messed up. I don't know if this is because the cone needs to be raised a bit more for the piezo to register the location or if I am just not configuring things correctly. It's probably a mix of both but I'm lost with how to approach it.

I totally know that I have a road ahead of me when it comes to getting these dialed in, and if I can't overcome these two to three small obstacles I don't know how much playability I can get in the long run.

Another question I have is if I'm using center mounted piezos on all drums, can I use positional sensing on split inputs (2 drums per input on mono) or does it require that each drum be dedicated to its own input?

Thanks for any insight anyone can provide.

[Rob]

If you contact me via technical support, we can have a look at what's going wrong and I can either suggest ways to fix your build issues or modify my algorithms.

Rob

[dsteinschneider]

Hi technik,

I have the UFO eBridges triggers for a five piece Ludwig Accent Combo. This will definitely work great. I had a few things to troubleshoot.

For my kick drum I had to follow this post by Rob:
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=569

I bought Mitch's 3 ply heads and rim protectors also. At the time I was pretty new to all this and figured he had things sorted out. In retrospect that notion has held up very well, these heads play really well and i think the rebound is fine. I do have them tight. I followed the same instructions - I put a piece of tape on a straight edge that was 3/16 above the edge and set the cones to that height and the triggering is very good.

[tehnick]

I have been able to iron out a lot my issues by reapproaching a few things with the install. I am still doing some tweaking and testing because ultimately I think most of the issues are install related.

I needed to reinstall the trigger bar. I know that Mitch at UFO Drums states the ebridge triggers don't require drilling, and to an extent that is true. The bridge works best if you plan on using a single kick pedal. Double kick pedals create two problems with the bridge:

1. Either the slave pedal or the main pedal will be too hot or too cold compared to the other side because of the way the piezo has to be positioned if mounting across the center using the lugs. It has to sit on either side of the foam rebound pad.

2. To counter the centering issue, the trigger bar needs to be mounted vertically so that the piezo is almost centered above both beaters on top of the foam pad. The main beater still will be closer than the slave, but the triggering will be more even. This requires drilling into the shell. There's just no way around it with the design. The only trigger on the market I've seen that doesn't have the issue is the RDrums one and it's pretty damn expensive.

In addition, the trigger bars do not mount well on 8" diameter drums, nor do they mount well on a standard size 5x14 snare. The hardware used for the bridge isn't able to utilize the lug mount screws without running out of post length to raise the trigger to an acceptable height. Those shells also require drilling to get it super secure. A 6.5x14 snare would have enough depth.

I have put the triggers only 1/8 max above the bearing edge. I know I have seen 3/16 mentioned, but that's around 5mm in height and 1/8 puts me around 3 to 4 which seems to have eliminated double triggering for the most part. I'm still tweaking things, especially with the kick because I think my technique is most of the issue. I haven't played in 10 years so I have bad habits the triggers pick up on way more than acoustic drums would. Making progress for sure, but not quite there yet.

I also learned that if I split the ports I need to wire one drum for tip, the other for ring, otherwise I am sending the wrong signal for one of the drums to trigger the appropriate sound. Now I'm learning that I could probably split the ports for my Yamaha cymbals to get a total of 8 cymbals on the one box. Pretty stoked on those possibilities.

[dsteinschneider]

Hi tehnick,

I forgot to mention in my post that I drilled my bass drum - two holes at the top and two holes at the bottom centered for the L brackets so I could adjust the cone exactly up and down. That way my adjustments wouldn't be angling away from the center where the beater pillow is and it would be centered over the double beaters. I'm going to investigate 1/8" next time I open up the bass drum.

I didn't drlll any of the toms so those crossbars aren't level to the floor. I didn't bother because the piezo is centered and it would just be aesthetic plus if you adjust the angles it would probaby mess that up anyway.

I had to buy longer screws for the snare lugs - they were too short for the L bracket.

I did remove the airhole grommets and enlarge that hole a tiny bit to mount the TRS jacks (I got the long ones)

Posting this detail for others installing UFO eBridges.

Doug