Ride cymbal trigger problem

[ytchi]

I've got my kit now and it's superb - I've even got the hi-hat playing really well (mounted on a pearl stand). There's just one little issue that I can't sort out with hard ride cymbal bow hits triggering soft bell samples. This completely screws up the flow of the ride pattern by placing a soft sound where there should be a loud one.

I've read the manual (OS 1.24) and I think I understand the options but I still can't tweak the gain so that cymbal responds properly. The best setting seems to be with gain at 0 and the cup setting on High (but setting this on low doesn't stop the issue, it merely changes the volume of the bell sound). So, as far as I can tell, there's no way to stop the bell triggering from a hard bow hit.

Sure, I can try and learn to strike the cymbal with less force but that's years of muscle memory I've got to undo. Any ideas?

[3drum]

I've got the same problem here.

[edtc]

hi

try to change the velocity curve ....   if not enough , try with lighter sticks ....

[ytchi]

I've got the velocity curve set on Neg1 which gives a nice response but doesn't stop the bell triggers unfortunately. I'm using 5A sticks I wouldn't want to go any lighter to be honest but thanks for the suggestion.

I'm not sure if the problem is with the cymbal hardware or the module. I tried using my roland CY-15 and that exhibited the same behaviour, it was slightly more pronounced if anything. In fact the 2box cymbal seems to work like some of the samples on my old TD-6 where you could set up a single zone cymbal pad to give two different sounds depending on the velocity. I didn't like it then, and I'm even less keen now

[ytchi]

This doesn't change the fact that the kit is fantastic, btw. 

[Manfred]

Hi,

yes, you are right. Differentiation between bell and bow is done by measuring the output level of the cymbal. So usually the transition can be setup by adjusting the gain. Sounds somehow like your cymbal is a bit too "hot" since your gain is already at 0. But the differentiation won't be perfect anyway. At my kit it is difficult to play soft bell sounds because this results in hard bow sounds.

Does this happen with both cymbals?

Regards, Manfred


PS. Of course you could reduce the output voltage of your cymbal with two resistors or a poti but in my opinion this is not an option at a brand new kit.

[3drum]

Yes it happens with both cymbals. It's been mentioned before, but the cymbal triggering will probably never be perfect due to the poor design of the cymbals. I'd be curious to hear from Jman if he has better triggering response with his converted cymbal design.

[ytchi]

Manfred

my solution was slightly more crude than your suggestion of using a resistor but I think it's achieved the same effect - I've just used a very long extension cable to connect the ride cymbal to the module and this seems to produce just enough signal loss to calm the cymbal down. This, together with changing the 'layer' setting to 'fix', allows me to play with the force I'm used to without inadvertently triggering the bell sound. It's not perfect, but it's much more playable than it was.

EDIT

actually, the cable wasn't the fix - just turning the cymbal around a few degrees so I was hitting a different spot caused the output level to drop. It seems like there's a couple of hotspots 180 degrees apart on the bow that play a lot louder than the rest of the surface, if I avoid these then the bell trigger problem isn't so bad.