Feature Request: Hot Spot Suppression for Cymbals

[dsteinschneider]

Hi Rob,

Pintech has a $36 single zone 16" that I use for crashes. It's the the TC16. It would be a good one to use for testing cymbal hot spot suppression.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... er-16-inch

Doug

[perceval]

Isn't it just a project box held by 2 screws?

Seems pretty straightforward, but if you're not comfortable about this, no worries.

This is what is under the box. Not a lot of room to work with. I figure I’d destroy such nice work.

Ok, so the box is actually just a cap.

The piezo is mounted on that brown pad, and that sticks to the cymbal?
No need to rewire anything, just add a thin gasket layer of some kind of rubber between the box and the cymbal. Experiment with different kind, form hard to soft, and different thickness, until you get the right amount of damping, without losing sensitivity when you're not hitting directly on the piezo.

[perceval]

Hi Rob,

Pintech has a $36 single zone 16" that I use for crashes. It's the the TC16. It would be a good one to use for testing cymbal hot spot suppression.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... er-16-inch

Doug

I might have something similar I can send to Rob.

[Mylo]

Ok, so the box is actually just a cap.

The piezo is mounted on that brown pad, and that sticks to the cymbal?
No need to rewire anything, just add a thin gasket layer of some kind of rubber between the box and the cymbal. Experiment with different kind, form hard to soft, and different thickness, until you get the right amount of damping, without losing sensitivity when you're not hitting directly on the piezo.

The piezo is attached directly to the cymbal with some serious looking glue. I doubt it could be pried off the cymbal without breaking it. These thing are built to last. If the piezo ever does fail and I have to repair it I’ll try something then. But at this point I can’t bring myself to mess with it. We’re talking about a $250 cymbal.

[perceval]

Ok, so the box is actually just a cap.

The piezo is mounted on that brown pad, and that sticks to the cymbal?
No need to rewire anything, just add a thin gasket layer of some kind of rubber between the box and the cymbal. Experiment with different kind, form hard to soft, and different thickness, until you get the right amount of damping, without losing sensitivity when you're not hitting directly on the piezo.

The piezo is attached directly to the cymbal with some serious looking glue. I doubt it could be pried off the cymbal without breaking it. These thing are built to last. If the piezo ever does fail and I have to repair it I’ll try something then. But at this point I can’t bring myself to mess with it. We’re talking about a $250 cymbal.

Yikes! Ok.

Running out of ideas except maybe a clear plastic dot on top to dampen the direct hits?

Otherwise, the only recourse is either NOT hit directly over the piezo (should be easy) or Rob adding a hot spot reducer on cymbals like the one present on the snare input (should be harder!).

[dsteinschneider]

I'm an expert on the Pintech TC16 because I decided to clone an XT16 into one. I sourced the same little project box they use from Polycase and bought a pack of TRS female jacks. I used pre-soldered Goedrums piezos. I used 3M clear two sided tape that's about 1mm thick to attach the piezo to the surface of the cymbal right where Pintech puts it. I made a little neoprene 1/8" gasket to go between the project box and the cymbal.

I'm writing all this because I've built three of the above. For one of them I ordered a Pintech replacement "Strike Guard" which is 1/8" medium soft smooth surface poron that goes on top of the area you strike (project box is centered underneath. That material must spread out the hit because I much less hot spotting with that cymbal. The Strike Guard was $11 shipped from Amazon Prime. I have yet to find adhesive backed sheets of that stuff that's much less than the one from Pintech.

I added Mryk membrane switches to the edge underneath just for choke. I might put the switches on top going forward and cover them with the poron.

[TheFlymo]

Just a thought- I have a Yamaha PCY-155 that has the same problem and has consequently always been.... frankly unusable in my experience. A broken product. Hot triggering right over the piezo, and virtually nil over the rest of the surface. Very unsatisfying to play.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I pulled it apart and found that there are spaces to mount another two piezos spaced evenly around the underside, so I bought a bunch on eBay for a few quid, soldered them up in parallel, stuck them on with decent double sided tape, and the result is literally night and day. Even the bell seems to work much more reliably. My eDrumin has it set as a regular Roland 2 zone, and bell/bow/edge all work nicely.

I did try two piezos and it hardly helped at all, so I suspect there's some sort of resonance in the material that means it needs three.

Now piezos in parallel don't really provide three times the signal output like you'd expect, so I did have to crank the attenuation pot on the cymbal up to max, and the eDrumin is set to near max gain, but hey it works.

Also, I do have some "active" powered piezo adapters that would boost the output, but I wasn't sure how the eDrumin would like it. Might test on my (retired) Megadrum...

[Rob]

If you are having hot spot issues with Yamaha pads, you just need to turn down the mechanical gain potentiometer on the pad itself and then turn up the gain in eDRUMin. Adjust the pot on the pad so that a gain of 3 in the eDRUMin software is optimal.

[evh0u812]

Rob, is 3 the ideal gain level for the edrumin? My pads are all on the hot side so the gain on all my inputs is 1 to 1.2. Is there a benefit to lowering the output of the pads and raising the gain?

[Rob]

3 is about ideal for Yamaha pads or any other pad that is wired Yamaha style. Pads that are wired Roland style, any gain value will be just fine.