TranslationHow do you all find DIY so easy?
Re: How do you all find DIY so easy?
Don't the membrane switches have to be mounted on the top of the cymbal (under a layer of rubber) so that they're compressed by a stick hit and make a momentary connection?
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Polyphonics
- Posts: 77
- Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:11 pm
Re: How do you all find DIY so easy?
I have a commercial metal e-cymbal which has its switch on the underside, these picked up the edge hits ok.
Re: How do you all find DIY so easy?
People have had success with these mounted underneath the cymbal. I tried but it didn’t work for me. I think the key is having a thin, flexible cymbal that bends enough when hit to trigger the switch. My hi hat that I tried was a really thick Piaste with little to no give.Arran wrote:Don't the membrane switches have to be mounted on the top of the cymbal (under a layer of rubber) so that they're compressed by a stick hit and make a momentary connection?
Re: How do you all find DIY so easy?
I’ve had about 50/50 success rate on the first try with diy. My problems have been bad piezos, wrong cone height, switched tip and ring, opposite polarity and shorts at the terminal. Most recently when setting up my two zone hi hat with the edrumin I had a short circuit between my tip and ring. I was using a myrk membrane like you for the edge zone. It resulted in an error and the edrumin treating the switch like a piezo causing constant false triggers. I was baffled at first because it worked fine with my roland td12. With rob’s advice and the help of multimeter I found the short at the terminal tabs of my trs jack. The ring one was bent so it also made contact with the tip. I bent it back a it worked perfect. Sounds similar to my problem. I would check the terminal connection first. And of course use a multimeter.
Re: How do you all find DIY so easy?
Mylo wrote:Contact them through eBay and ask for the documentation. They send it out pretty quickly.Polyphonics wrote:Would you happen to have that PDF anywhere? Does Adam have an email?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Myrk-Membrane- ... 2401098849
Hi guys,
I did not think, that those parts are available in, at, on ebay. Thanks for the links.
Manuel
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Polyphonics
- Posts: 77
- Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:11 pm
Re: How do you all find DIY so easy?
What's a multimeter?AKA Wayne wrote:I’ve had about 50/50 success rate on the first try with diy. My problems have been bad piezos, wrong cone height, switched tip and ring, opposite polarity and shorts at the terminal. Most recently when setting up my two zone hi hat with the edrumin I had a short circuit between my tip and ring. I was using a myrk membrane like you for the edge zone. It resulted in an error and the edrumin treating the switch like a piezo causing constant false triggers. I was baffled at first because it worked fine with my roland td12. With rob’s advice and the help of multimeter I found the short at the terminal tabs of my trs jack. The ring one was bent so it also made contact with the tip. I bent it back a it worked perfect. Sounds similar to my problem. I would check the terminal connection first. And of course use a multimeter.
How would I know if the terminal is OK or not? Are we talking about terminal strips or the female jack terminal?
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Quixotic120
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2020 4:42 am
Re: How do you all find DIY so easy?
Multimeter is a tool to check various electronic things like conductivity, voltage, resistance, etc. for diy edrums you generally need the conductivity measurement as it allows you to check for shorts and broken connections
I definitely skimmed this thread at best so sorry if this is retreading. In my experience diy edrums are doable but the cymbals are significantly more difficult, especially so with membrane switches and/or multi zone. At this point I use gen16 for cymbals and drum pads are all DIY. At the moment I’m using mega drum with fairly decent results incl. positional sensing but after several years I still find myself endlessly configuring stuff. I recently ordered an edrumin and according to tracking it arrived today (and frustratingly I’m out of town for a few days and the week is busy at work so I probably won’t get to it until next weekend)
Centrally locating the piezo, ensuring the foam cone height is correct, controlling additional vibrations from your additional hardware, proper foam cones, and ensuring your build is extremely sturdy are all very important factors. I wasted a lot of cash on trial and error but I like doing stuff like this
My pads are a custom design that uses a traditional acoustic shell. A circle of MDF is cut that is about 3-5mm short of the shells inner diameter is cut, a 4” circle is marked in the center, and 5 sections are cut from outside of that circle to make something that looks like a Star or asterisk pattern. The cutouts aren’t really important if you aren’t doing a rim trigger. The MDF is mounted to the shell with l brackets at the end of each “leg” but the mounting height has to be fairly precise to ensure the foam cone doesn’t push hard against the head or not make contact. The screws mounting the MDF to the bracket have these rubber grommet things I found that are meant for drones to reduce vibration around mounting screws; these seem to help quite a bit in my testing. 15mm piezo is mounted centrally with a cone under a remo silent stroke mesh head. A newer design I’m playing with does the same thing but mounts the MDF a bit lower and adds a small “riser” to the center made out of a 3/16” aluminum plate mounted on four screws with nuts to hold the “riser” plate in place. This design allows for some adjustment of the cone height but is a bit more complex and increases the chance of extraneous vibration. Additionally I use loctite blue on all screws and nuts (in addition to using nylock nuts) because otherwise after a few weeks of daily drumming everything works itself loose and you start having issues. I’ve made my own cones out of a material called poron foam. I use a method that came from some website (it’s been years) where you stack squares of the foam to the correct height then cut away excess. I now have a janky looking homemade jig that holds a carving knife and a belt sander at the correct angle against the cone so I can carve away the excess material and then smooth out the surface. They work well now but it took a lot of practice runs to make something that worked well (and didn’t look like shit). this is a pain and started out more as a “can I do it” thing, you should probably just buy Roland replacement cones.
I would think cymbals would be easier because there’s far less complexity in mounting the piezo but in practice that hasn’t been the case. I think it has something to do with having the piezo directly on the underside of the playing surface versus having the foam cone as a buffer. I’ve tried piezo, membranes, combinations of the two, plastic practice cymbals, metal cymbals, etc and nothing had a really good end result. Plastic and piezo single zone cymbals could trigger pretty well but the feel was gross even with gum rubber added. Similarly creating single zone “cymbals” that were essentially just rubber single zone pads worked well enough but I really wanted something more akin to traditional cymbals.
Gen16, to me, has the best playability/feel of all the options (although there are definitely drawbacks and the variety of sounds is nowhere near as much as the big drum VSTs) so once I went this way I kind of abandoned the whole diy cymbal thing
I definitely skimmed this thread at best so sorry if this is retreading. In my experience diy edrums are doable but the cymbals are significantly more difficult, especially so with membrane switches and/or multi zone. At this point I use gen16 for cymbals and drum pads are all DIY. At the moment I’m using mega drum with fairly decent results incl. positional sensing but after several years I still find myself endlessly configuring stuff. I recently ordered an edrumin and according to tracking it arrived today (and frustratingly I’m out of town for a few days and the week is busy at work so I probably won’t get to it until next weekend)
Centrally locating the piezo, ensuring the foam cone height is correct, controlling additional vibrations from your additional hardware, proper foam cones, and ensuring your build is extremely sturdy are all very important factors. I wasted a lot of cash on trial and error but I like doing stuff like this
My pads are a custom design that uses a traditional acoustic shell. A circle of MDF is cut that is about 3-5mm short of the shells inner diameter is cut, a 4” circle is marked in the center, and 5 sections are cut from outside of that circle to make something that looks like a Star or asterisk pattern. The cutouts aren’t really important if you aren’t doing a rim trigger. The MDF is mounted to the shell with l brackets at the end of each “leg” but the mounting height has to be fairly precise to ensure the foam cone doesn’t push hard against the head or not make contact. The screws mounting the MDF to the bracket have these rubber grommet things I found that are meant for drones to reduce vibration around mounting screws; these seem to help quite a bit in my testing. 15mm piezo is mounted centrally with a cone under a remo silent stroke mesh head. A newer design I’m playing with does the same thing but mounts the MDF a bit lower and adds a small “riser” to the center made out of a 3/16” aluminum plate mounted on four screws with nuts to hold the “riser” plate in place. This design allows for some adjustment of the cone height but is a bit more complex and increases the chance of extraneous vibration. Additionally I use loctite blue on all screws and nuts (in addition to using nylock nuts) because otherwise after a few weeks of daily drumming everything works itself loose and you start having issues. I’ve made my own cones out of a material called poron foam. I use a method that came from some website (it’s been years) where you stack squares of the foam to the correct height then cut away excess. I now have a janky looking homemade jig that holds a carving knife and a belt sander at the correct angle against the cone so I can carve away the excess material and then smooth out the surface. They work well now but it took a lot of practice runs to make something that worked well (and didn’t look like shit). this is a pain and started out more as a “can I do it” thing, you should probably just buy Roland replacement cones.
I would think cymbals would be easier because there’s far less complexity in mounting the piezo but in practice that hasn’t been the case. I think it has something to do with having the piezo directly on the underside of the playing surface versus having the foam cone as a buffer. I’ve tried piezo, membranes, combinations of the two, plastic practice cymbals, metal cymbals, etc and nothing had a really good end result. Plastic and piezo single zone cymbals could trigger pretty well but the feel was gross even with gum rubber added. Similarly creating single zone “cymbals” that were essentially just rubber single zone pads worked well enough but I really wanted something more akin to traditional cymbals.
Gen16, to me, has the best playability/feel of all the options (although there are definitely drawbacks and the variety of sounds is nowhere near as much as the big drum VSTs) so once I went this way I kind of abandoned the whole diy cymbal thing