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I purchased a drum-tec pro 14" snare and have been playing it for about two weeks. Since there's not much info on how well it works with Edrumin, I thought I would share my impressions.

I bought it because I was hoping it would perform better than my Roland PD-125 pad. The bottom line is that it definitely has better dynamics and control. Here are the improvements for me in order of importance.

- Rimshots: Better dynamics and control of rimshots. The problem I had with my PD-125 was that it was hard reliably triggering rimshots unless you were hitting really hard and if you hit that hard then you don't have much dynamics (most rimshots are 127 velocities). The Drum-tec solved that problem--I can reliably play rimshots at different levels. It also revealed that part of my rimshot problem was that my left-hand technique isn't as good as my right hand.  

- Head hits: The head is better with dynamics than the PD-125 too. This is actually very subtle since the PD-125 head tracks very well too. At first, I thought there was no difference but I noticed I was gradually reducing the velocity curves and gain on the drum-tec and still felt like I could get loud hits when I needed them. 

Also, hotspot suppression works really well on the PD-125 but I couldn't get it to work on the drum-tec--and, yes, the pricey drum-tec has a hot-spot. Oddly enough, I don't notice it when I'm playing. I think is because it's small and the head is large so the probability of hitting the hotspot is smaller and it's easier to stay clear. The center two inches of the head is pretty hot too but it acts more like a sweet spot for really sensitive drumming. I would still like to have the Edrumin hotspot suppression work on the drum-tec, mainly because it just bugs me, but practically speaking it has not been a problem when actually playing.

- Sidestick - it's the same story with sidestick--the dynamics and reliable triggering are better than the PD-125. However, also like the PD-125, for me, I couldn't guarantee not accidentally triggering a rim-only hit during, for example, a massive flam, so I assigned a shallow rimshot sound to rim-only rather than a cross-stick rim-click. This works really well and makes the snare a joy to play because you can really dig in and get very expressive and real-sounding snare work accented with controlled rimshots and rim hits. I don't have much experience playing a real snare but this experience seems really nice to me.

- build quality is heavy-duty, top-notch, and beautiful. The output jack is the serious locking kind. The only odd thing is that the rubber rim cushion isn't notched by tension rod heads so it's a bit of a wrestling match to get a tuning key on some of them. Eventually, I found out that if I line up the key with the tension head nut and push down hard you can get the key down. Not a problem, but given the excellence of the rest of the hardware I was surprised that was overlooked. Similarly, getting the rim cushion off and on is also a real wrestling match.

- its output is hot--I was running my gain at 1 (min) and it seemed to hit max velocity too easily so I added in some 25K resistors for the head and rim and that cooled things down just enough so I just need a little gain to get the full range of dynamics.

- at first, I was sort of shocked by the 14" size versus the 12" PD-125--it seem to dwarf the rest of my kit and it felt odd to have to squeeze up against it to play. However, I quickly got used to that and that's easily outweighed by better dynamics, triggering, and just a larger area to smash away at. There is also definitely something nice about hitting something that is solid--the snare has some real mass.

- position sensing does work but I use Steven Slate drums, which doesn't support positional sensing, so I have no way of evaluating that.

Is it worth the money? There's about a $400 USD difference between it and a used PD-125. My feeling is that if you are just learning, or don't need slightly better dynamics, the PD-125 is excellent with Edrumin. But like with fine musical instruments, you are paying a  premium for an incremental change in performance, but that incremental improvement may be very valuable to you.

Follow-up note. I did get Hotspot Suppress working somewhat, although still not as effective as on the Roland PD125. However, I still preferred the dynamics when not using it. Below are the settings I used.

I have received one of their snares for testing purposes.

My snare is not too hot and so doesn't require any resistors to cool down the signal.

I can confirm that HSS nor PS are currently working well with this snare. I'll be working with this snare for a while to try to resolve the issues.

Cool! Great to hear you've got a snare to test.

I suspect the quality of these snares is pretty consistent so my snare and your snare probably have the same output. If I recall correctly, without cooling down the output with resistors, a rimshot gain of 1 was too much but with anything below 1 it wouldn't reach 127. The resistors allowed me to raise the overall input gain and set the rimshot gain to 1 and that setting allowed rimshot at 127 but only on the hardest shots (also, maybe I don't really understand exactly how gain/rimshot scaling interact). Anyway, I did so much tweaking maybe if I go back and try it without the resistors I can get it to work just as well, although I must admit, now that I am used to it, it's working really well.

Really looking forward to you making some progress on HHS and PS, and seeing what settings you find are optimal for you.

Many thanks, Rob!

Rob wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 04, 2022 1:43 am

I have received one of their snares for testing purposes.

My snare is not too hot and so doesn't require any resistors to cool down the signal.

I can confirm that HSS nor PS are currently working well with this snare. I'll be working with this snare for a while to try to resolve the issues.

Which snare did you get? I had the 13” diabolo hand hammered and PS and HHS didn’t work so well there either…

I got a 14" stainless steel. I've been working with it for the past two days and the cause of the problems seems to be some high-frequency noise that prevents HSS from working properly when hitting the pad off-center and close to the edge. I've traded drum heads with my ddt-140 and the issue remains, so it's not an issue with the 'real feel' head. I suspect the problem is a little tab that drum-tec glues onto the top of their cones. Roland doesn't do that and neither does ddt. The ddt-140 and drum-tech seem to use the exact same cone, btw. I might try to cut the tab off to see if the problem goes away, but that's not a good solution. The noise can be filtered out by modifying my circuitry, which will allow positional sensing to work well, but that will also kill any chances of hot-spot suppression working.

So this morning I took the bottom mesh off and laid a couple of t-shirts on top of the spokes to dampen things, and the difference is night and day. Looks like the issue is resonance in the spokes. I try some more targeted dampening tomorrow.

So I sacrificed an old waterproof rubber glove and used it to tightly wrap the spokes. One side of the material is rubber and the other is cloth. I think anything that is very flexible and dense will work well. This has removed about 90% of the resonance issues and allows HSS and positional sensing to work properly. The another 5% can be resolved by adding a 10K-20K resistor in series with the tip signal, but I should be able to deal with it in the firmware so that the resistor is not needed.
This post is probably relevant to anyone using eDRUMin for DIY A->E conversions. Make sure your cross members are dampened, otherwise they will introduce unwanted resonance into the piezo signal and compromised performance.

Interesting, when used with a roland module these drum-tec snares perform regarding PS even better than the roland pads… I remember you said the edrumin is pretty sensitive that it detects any small vibration so yeah a good isolation of the spokes is vital. What would happen if you change the cone for a roland cone?
And lastly, how about crossticks and rimshots, are they easy to get?

Really interesting. I have the wooden snare but will try damping the rods.

Lalo brings up a good point that these snares work great without modification with Roland drum brains. It would be nice if that was possible. Or maybe adding damping is beneficial, regardless of drum brain, and drum-tec could add it to their product.