Piece Together Kit - May have fudged up. (Opinions needed)

T

travis09

Junior Member
I pieced together an electronic set off of Ebay and I'm thinking I may have completely fudged up by doing so. I basically kept everything Roland because I knew they are great quality however I wanted a good kit to use with an Alesis Trigger I/O in conjunction with Toontrack's EZDrummer. Before I get into detail about what is going on heres my kit as of now.

4 x Roland PD-8 Pads (Dual trigger / piezo switch type from my understanding)
2 x Roland CY-8 Cymbals (Dual trigger / chokable / piezo switch type)
1 x Pintech 14" Cymbal (Piezo switch type)
1 x Roland KD-8 Bass Drum Trigger
1 x FD-7 Hihat Pedal Trigger

I'm having major issues with the Roland CY-8 cymbals. They are very unresponsive. You really have to whack them in order to get anything from them and sometimes you get nothing even though your hitting them at the same velocity as usual. I have tried turning the gain way up on the Trigger I/O with no success and I made sure all of the cymbals are set for PS (piezo switch.) Are they just incompatible with the Trigger i/o? I was thinking I may have to just break down and buy a Roland module. I didn't want to do that in the first place to save some money as they are going for around $250 used. I did disassemble one of the cymbals to see if there was anything I could do to help the sensitivity and it looks like the piezo switch is double sided stick taped to the cymbal and nothing is against the other side of the switch. Should I solder in a new piezo switch? (I have a decent electronics background as well) Could I add a piece of foam to the other side of the switch? Just ideas, I could use opinions as right now I feel like I wasted a bunch of money.
 
That Alesis I/O has been known to not work well with Roland pads, so either get rid of the Alesis, or start buy Alesis pads.

The main issue with the Alesis using Roland stuff is the velocity sensing gets thrown off majorly, resulting in either a full force hit if you hit it softly, or a really soft hit if you slammed the pad.
 
So the way I look at it as of right now is that my investment isn't entirely down the drain. But I will most definitely have to spend more money. I will have to purchase a roland module to have things work properly. It's not the end of the world. I can always MIDI the roland module into the alesis and then out to my laptop if I want to keep using ezdrummer or any other software for that matter.
 
cyberdyke said:
I know this post was awhile ago and I'm new to the list but those Roland cy-8 cymbals are notorious for being crap. They stop working, or work intermittently. A black eye for Roland.
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I read this as well however when they are paired with Roland modules they seemingly work fine. I haven't seen many reports of them working badly with Roland modules... only when they are paired with others. I'm sure with a new switch and some slight modifications they can easily be repaired into a nice electronic cymbal.
 
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