Footnote to a (solved) 5 year old bass trigger issue: multiple piezos
Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2025 4:26 pm
As a footnote to the bass trigger problems I had almost 5 years ago upon receipt of my original kit, I tried something that ended up working very well for me that may be helpful for others with double bass pedals.
The UFO drums kick trigger assembly I replaced my original bass trigger with worked absolutely fine with the eDrumin. But something did occur to me as I was tuning placement of the UFO trigger and muffle pad for it since I have double bass pedals.
This part is just common sense --
when there is only 1 piezo on a trigger setup, placement/distance of that piezo trigger to a particular bass pedal beater's impact location with a set of double bass pedals could matter significantly. ie, one pedal may have a stronger signal than the other if you don't have the two pedals equidistant from that trigger. I had already seen that with my brand new kit.
There were some other factors as well in my situation, the orientation of the trigger bar for example was not 3 o'clock/9 o'clock, so when there are only certain places to attach a double bass pedal and a certain range of area you can mechanically configure that double bass pedal's beaters to hit, it made a lot more sense for me to have a 3 o'clock/9 o'clock orientation of the trigger bar, allowing a lot more flexibility in lateral/horizontal positioning of the UFO kick trigger's muffle pad and trigger(s) -- or any other bass trigger -- to align with the strike zone of both beaters.
So in the process of planning that trigger swap I also planned carefully for a re-orientation of the bass trigger bar assembly to 3/9 positioning and all the little screws, washers, rubber insulators etc it would take to mount that solidly in the bass drum, drilling my own holes for it, and
I had also bought extra octo cones, piezos, etc. from UFO for long-term maintenance purposes, and while I was trying to be "all scientific" about getting exact as possible with locating the trigger on the bar to be as exactly equidistant as possible from each beater's hit location (so either beater would register the same signal level) I remembered the thing about how ATV's drums and cymbals -- and even some of Roland's now -- use an array of 2 or more (3 usually) side-mounted piezos. And why that is an advantage with how you wire them up - it no longer matters so much where you hit the head.
The way you wire these, the hit basically registers some on each piezo wired together in parallel and the net result coming out of the "main" + and - wire connected to the out jack is roughly equivalent signals regardless of which kick pedal you hit.
I had extra parts, so I gave it a try.
it worked. It worked GREAT. And I didn't/don't have to worry anymore about being fractions of an inch off from where one beater hits vs. the other, and one pedal generating hotter kicks than the other as a result. Of course, I still tried to get both piezos as close to same distance as possible to center of the strike zone, just to be scientific, but hits by either pedal are detected by a (2 piezo/trigger) array, whose signals felt by each piezo get combined by parallel wiring to the output jack.
And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw...
The UFO drums kick trigger assembly I replaced my original bass trigger with worked absolutely fine with the eDrumin. But something did occur to me as I was tuning placement of the UFO trigger and muffle pad for it since I have double bass pedals.
This part is just common sense --
when there is only 1 piezo on a trigger setup, placement/distance of that piezo trigger to a particular bass pedal beater's impact location with a set of double bass pedals could matter significantly. ie, one pedal may have a stronger signal than the other if you don't have the two pedals equidistant from that trigger. I had already seen that with my brand new kit.
There were some other factors as well in my situation, the orientation of the trigger bar for example was not 3 o'clock/9 o'clock, so when there are only certain places to attach a double bass pedal and a certain range of area you can mechanically configure that double bass pedal's beaters to hit, it made a lot more sense for me to have a 3 o'clock/9 o'clock orientation of the trigger bar, allowing a lot more flexibility in lateral/horizontal positioning of the UFO kick trigger's muffle pad and trigger(s) -- or any other bass trigger -- to align with the strike zone of both beaters.
So in the process of planning that trigger swap I also planned carefully for a re-orientation of the bass trigger bar assembly to 3/9 positioning and all the little screws, washers, rubber insulators etc it would take to mount that solidly in the bass drum, drilling my own holes for it, and
I had also bought extra octo cones, piezos, etc. from UFO for long-term maintenance purposes, and while I was trying to be "all scientific" about getting exact as possible with locating the trigger on the bar to be as exactly equidistant as possible from each beater's hit location (so either beater would register the same signal level) I remembered the thing about how ATV's drums and cymbals -- and even some of Roland's now -- use an array of 2 or more (3 usually) side-mounted piezos. And why that is an advantage with how you wire them up - it no longer matters so much where you hit the head.
The way you wire these, the hit basically registers some on each piezo wired together in parallel and the net result coming out of the "main" + and - wire connected to the out jack is roughly equivalent signals regardless of which kick pedal you hit.
I had extra parts, so I gave it a try.
it worked. It worked GREAT. And I didn't/don't have to worry anymore about being fractions of an inch off from where one beater hits vs. the other, and one pedal generating hotter kicks than the other as a result. Of course, I still tried to get both piezos as close to same distance as possible to center of the strike zone, just to be scientific, but hits by either pedal are detected by a (2 piezo/trigger) array, whose signals felt by each piezo get combined by parallel wiring to the output jack.
And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw...