FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Yamaha Electronic Drum Set

Question:
I was wondering if it is possible to set up an Electronic drum kit for around $1000 that sounds good. Is it possible to get a good sounding brain and at least a 5-pad kit in that price range? Someone also mentioned a while back that he made his own pads using some Radio-Shack part, and set up an entire kit for only a couple hundred bucks. I'm assuming that you can't make a pad pressure-sensitive this way, but other than that, how is this done?

Answer:
Piezoelectric buzzers and transducers are the radio shack part. In terms of pressure sensitivity, they're just fine. They're just like speakers and microphones. The level of signal is proportional to how hard you hit it, or yell into it, etc. I'd love to hear recommendations on materials to use and where to get them to surround the buzzer, some kind of rubber pad, etc. In addition to the D4, Octopads, etc. there are some devices called Trigger-To-MIDI converters. The one I've seen is called the MIDI-KITI, where K.I.T.I (most people say it Kitty) means something like Kit something Trigger something. This baby ran about three hundred list a year or two ago, and you can then build your own pads. Gotta MIDI it to a drum machine though. I'd think with the D4 being out that if the price for the KITI hasn't gone down the D4 is a better buy because it's got the sounds in it. It can be done very cheaply. I saw a demo by an engineer who built his own. He bought a Commodore Vic 20 at a garage sale for $20 and programmed his own ROM for it. He bought Radio Shack piezo transducers and some practice pads and mounted the piezos in the practice pads, and fed their output to the VIC20 which did the CV to MIDI conversion. A similar thing can be done using the Alesis D4 or the new Yamaha rack mount drum machine using the analog trigger inputs. Buy some practice pads and mount the piezos inside and feed their output to the trigger inputs. The piezos are 'pressure sensitive' (sic) in that the harder you hit them, the more voltage you get. On the D4 I think this means the