Sonor Giant step twin effect

MisterZero

Senior Member
Anyone try these? Any good? Better question..where the heck can I buy them? I don't see them for sale anywhere.....
 
I'll receive one in a couple of days - I've been curious about this pedal and found one used for an attractive price. I think I'm ok with doubles on a regular pedal but let's see. The Twin Effect can also be used for latin/percussion stuff, not only for hyperspeed metal (and you could hit like 300-400 bpm if you use a quad setup/2 Twin Effect pedals).

Anyway even Thomas Lang needed some time to utilize that split pedalboard function. So don't expect instant gratification.
 
I'll receive one in a couple of days - I've been curious about this pedal and found one used for an attractive price. I think I'm ok with doubles on a regular pedal but let's see. The Twin Effect can also be used for latin/percussion stuff, not only for hyperspeed metal (and you could hit like 300-400 bpm if you use a quad setup/2 Twin Effect pedals).

Anyway even Thomas Lang needed some time to utilize that split pedalboard function. So don't expect instant gratification.


Which one are you getting? Ha ha - never mind - I didn't realize Twin Effect was a pedal name. Not too up on Sonor stuff.
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/drums-percussion/sonor-giant-step-twin-effect-pedal

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Interesting pedal. I like the docking station idea, but think the spring mounting looks strange.
I'd really like to try one sometime, but it sounds like it'd take a fair amount of time to get good with it. For a heel down player, you'd have to develop a 'floating foot' to avoid stray hits with your heel.
 
Well, I found one and got it two days ago. Tough to find. Anyway, i played it the other day, and it was pretty cool. There were two concerns for me. First, it didn't do so well on my Roland V-drum KD-8 bass drum pad. I think it may be too heavy....but at the same time, it wasn't latched on correctly and I didn't have time to go get the allen key to adjust it....but I'll tinker with that later. What really concerns me, though, is that when I did fast single foot doubles, it sounded great, but when I looked down i noticed that the doubles were coming from the right beater only. i was doing heel-toe, and my heel hit wasn't even triggering the second beater. So then I thought, "what's the point?", if I can perform this maneuver as though this is just a regular pedal....

Anyway, I just barely touched on this thing so far, so I'm not gonna bad mouth it. I still do like it and even though I can return it within 14 days, I will not. It's a cool piece of equipment to have in my arsenal of stuff, even if I don't use it that much. I may need to find another use for it, latin, i.e. as someone else said here (Arky?). Anyway, I'll leave more feedback tomorrow as tonight I am going to strap this on to my acoustic kit and see what happens....
 
(...) I may need to find another use for it, latin, i.e. as someone else said here (Arky?)
I found this info in a post by Jeff Alameyda who has that pedal, too and is using it for latin perc sounds.

My pedal should arrive any day. I have the same thoughts - what's the point of the Twin Effect if you (myself, haha) can do regular doubles on a standard pedal? I guess there is (must be) a difference. Else there is no way to produce those ultra high speeds like 300-400 bpm (having 2 Twin Effect pedals/a quad beater setup).
 
Ya, I agree, Arky. I think having two of these would be awesome. Each one to a bass drum, and, after getting the feel down, being able to blast out some ungodly speed, I imagine. But, i feel that may be the problem for me here. Maybe I didn't think this all the way thru, but I still want to be able to play two pedals at times. But that's not possible with this thing, unless i get another bass drum.
 
I've seen that video before so it doesn't shock me _that_ much any more, haha. Regardless of what some people think of it that drummer has tremendous control/speed, doesn't he.

Ok, my pedal arrived yesterday. Cleaned it, took some pics. No real testing yet but will do so today. Massive construction, looks good. Smart twin action design I must say! If I manage to handle doubles I might be intrigued to get a 2nd pedal just for the hell of going hyperspeed.

I'll post a few pics if you don't mind.

Mister Zero, if you can do doubles using the toe end of the footplate you could try doing triplets/groups of 3's, e.g. by starting with a heel stroke on the small/back end of the footplate, followed by 2 strokes on the toe side.

I also thought of mounting different percussive blocks so the beaters would produce different sounds, for a 'latiny' context.

UPDATE
Tested it with a kick practice pad. Took me about 15-20 minutes to produce a 16th note pulse with my R foot. First I checked out the heel-toe motion, producing 1 stroke each (but didn't bother too long trying this). Then I tried doing heel-toe-toe/triplets/groups of 3 notes, doubling the toe stroke/utilizing rebound. Which worked fine after a few minutes. Then tried doubling the heel stroke - now this was most difficult of all, I had to readjust the 2 foot plates for better playing feel/effectivity. But after 15 minutes it 'clicked'. The heel stroke had enormous punch with the heel plate being a bit extended towards the player. I brought it back closer to the hinge which reduced that super hefty heel impact and also moved the toe plate closer to the beaters - this evened out the foot action. I think this pedal is great for catching rebounds because it has plenty of inertia due to the massive built and that heel stroke transition. I put up a click at 200 (pure guess, I thought I'd try) and... could play along 16th notes with my R foot right away. Could have cranked it up a bit like 210 but thought I'd stay at 200 for better evenness.

With my L foot I started doing the same stuff as my R foot but after a mere minute, hehe. So you see - if you have some heel-toe experience with regular pedals I'd say the transition to this pedal isn't a big deal. 200 bpm/R foot & 200 bpm/L foot, that's 400 bpm/both feet according to my math.

Watching that Guido Wyss video made me guess that he's incorporating rebound. As I said, the biggest part is learning to utilize the heel stroke rebound. And - I can't try this for now - of course getting both feet in sync if you're using 2 pedals. I think I'd go for the 'interlaced' version, mixing R and L foot strokes after each stroke. Now to get this sync clean might take some time...

So is this pedal cheating? I think it's as much cheating as learning to catch rebounds - with hands, feet or whatever.
 
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Here's some pics.

You see the action of the split heel vs. toe footplate.
The leverage and feel of the pedal can be manipulated by adjusting the heel and toe 'control' plates (each is tightened by 2 massive stainless Allen screws).

Beaters are 2-way version (plastic vs. felt) - on the pics I had the beaters mounted too far off the pedal - that was just for the pics - as afterwards I noticed that I had to bring them closer to adjust the beater height to the kick practice pad.

That lever on the right handside loosens/fastens the fastening piece (red) which is locked into the Sonar Docking Station (permanent bass drum mount - not depicted), for easy pedal docking once you have the Docking Station in place.

Last pics - example of having those heel/toe 'control' pieces closer or in wider position.
From my quick experience I'd say position 1 (on the left) is working well, bringing the heel piece away from the hinge creates enormous/overly punch.
 

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Thanks for your story and pics. I sort of have a little idea of how it works now.
What does the curved piece, mounted on the footboard under the toe area, with the rod going through it do?

Do you use the pedal mainly toe-toe, heel-heel? And would that be how you'd use it if you had two of them? Getting double heel strikes sounds like it'd be a bit tricky.
The pedal looks in fine shape. Looks like fun to play with.
 
Thanks for your story and pics. I sort of have a little idea of how it works now.
What does the curved piece, mounted on the footboard under the toe area, with the rod going through it do?
See pic ('borrowed' from the net). That's part of the docking system. The Sonor Docking System is to be clamped onto the bass drum hoop. The Docking System has a notch which perfectly fits that red tailpiece from the pedal. Once the Docking System has been clamped, that tailpiece is then inserted into that notch, you'd then use that silver lever to tighten the pedal to the hoop. Sounds more complicated than it is but might look a bit confusing.

Do you use the pedal mainly toe-toe, heel-heel? And would that be how you'd use it if you had two of them? Getting double heel strikes sounds like it'd be a bit tricky.
The pedal looks in fine shape. Looks like fun to play with.
I would start the other way round: Heel-heel, then toe-toe. That's the logical extension to playing 'regular' heel-toe. Of course you can start with the toe motion - which is great to have the follwoing/heel note accented. But for continuous 8th/16th notes I'm usually playing heel-toe. On the Twin Effect I'm simply 'doubling it up', utilizing both sections of that split footplate.

Yes, if I had 2 of those pedals I'd play:
Heel (R) - heel (L) - [now rebonds] heel (R) - heel (L) - then same with the toe motion so the R and L foot motions would be in sync/interlaced, with the L foot playing the same thing but with a 1/16th (or 1/32nd) note lag.

But that's my guess/theory so far. I think this should work (for hitting those insane speeds) but have to wait until I have 2 of them.

As a starter I'd recommend focusing on doubles on a regular pedal. (You see it took me no time to apply that rebound thing on the Twin Effect - because I've been practicing doubles for some time now.) And THEN start exploring the Twin Effect.
 

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The pics make it clear. A great idea to mount the pedal. I'm surprised more don't use it.

Yes, you'll have to get another of those pedals - you're feet will be flying. LOL
 
That would be for pure fun only (and/or the challenge to get those motions up to higher speed). I can't really imagine any music calling for those speeds... Plus you'd need triggers to even out the volume. The heel rebound strokes feel very weak to me - maybe it's just my lack of control and I can bring those rebound notes up more with more practice. -- I know how regular doubles feel up to the ca. 280 bpm range (but that feels hard!!). Yet it's shocking to play 200 bpm with the Twin Effect with one single foot - and with relative ease.

Someone like Tim Waterson might hammer out something in the 500 bpm range with a pair of Twin Effect pedals!
 
Arky, glad you like the pedal. I had both the Twin Effect single and the Giant Step double and sold them both within a year. I have size 12 feet and could never get comfy on the shorter boards and the heel action (on my pedal) was clunky at best. I think the design is solid, but it didnt work for me. I play Tricks now and can get that kind of speed without the heel down issue.


F
 
Florian, they are 'special'. Unless I could get fully used to the Twin Effect I'd prefer to have some 'regular' (double) pedals around. Because that heel split board is something I have to keep in mind, it's a different playing feel than on standard pedals. Anyway kudos to Sonor for inventing this thing and pushing the boundaries. But I can see not every drummers needs/wants them.

Wanted to add that buying this pedal was already worth it because I had the opportunity to check out (or rather: start checking out) what it's up to. Before that I had that pedal on my mind but was completely cueless how it would feel like. So buying it was a good thing whether I'll keep it or not - now I know that with those pedals ultra speeds are absolutely within reach for most drummers if you practice a bit.
 
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