Dummers read....

[xero380]

I have a question....the band is looking to get triggers set up for my drums so was wanting to know if any of the drummers on here like Hawk, Toonarockguy,SATAN,trucula,etc... are using these or know anything about them by chance? just wanting to know if I should go towards say ALESIS,ROLAND,YAMAHA,BOSS or what?

And should I go for the top or side mounts? I was gearing towards the top but wanted to check for sure... Tommy at the Emporium said most get the top mounts which is what i'd probably go with but would like to get everyone elses intake on this...

[Jones]

Alesis DM5 is reasonably priced and has some great sounds. Do the research on triggers, don't skimp on them or you'll be sorry.

Why not consider something like a vdrum kit? Best thing I ever did for stage volume.

[Colton]

Alesis DM5 is reasonably priced and has some great sounds. Do the research on triggers, don't skimp on them or you'll be sorry.

Why not consider something like a vdrum kit? Best thing I ever did for stage volume.

Hmm, that sounds like buying a new guitar because you didnt like the pickups.

*shrug*

[ToonaRockGuy]

I don't use triggers. The cats to talk to here on RP about it would be Reddawg and rreihart. Red used triggers all the time in his acoustic setup before he moved to Florida, and Russ uses them on his small Yamaha kit with The Red Letter Band.

(Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-trigger, I just don't use 'em. And since when does any drummer let a guitarist tell him what to put on his kit? )

[MINDCRIME]

When it comes to triggers, I would highly recommend ddrum pro acoustic triggers. They track well and they are very durable. A problem you can find with other rim mounted triggers is they can bend out of shape and loose contact with the drum head and not track correctly. The problem with head mounted triggers is, they wear out with head changes and can be damaged by stick hits or other wear. I bought my ddrum pros off ebay and you can usually get pretty good deals on them.

As far as modules go, some things to keep in mind...First of course...price. With modules the sky is the limit. You could get a Roland TD20 starting at about $1600 and they are amazing, or you can get a pretty decent module for a couple hundred bucks and still have a killer sound. Another thing to keep in mind, how many inputs will you have coming in. If you are going to trigger 8 drums, you need to make sure you have 8 inputs available. Another thing I would look at, mixing at gigs. My module have 4 outputs so I can seperate out different drum signals such as bass signal, snare signal, tom signal ..etc. Now the sound man can controll these signals independantly. If you can't split them up, you have to mix it on the module itself, which can work too with some tweaking.

The best thing to do, shop around and try them out. Guitar Center in Monroeville or Dales in Harrisburg would be happy to let you try different modules. I have an Alesis DM Pro and I'm pretty happy with it, I'm also pretty impressed with the Yamaha DTX modules to for the price.

Hope this helps.[/img]

[redawg]

One of the main things I liked about the Roland modules was the quick sliders on top of the module for quick, easy volume adjustments. No matter how hard I tried to get all my sounds balanced I always found myself reaching for one of the volume sliders every song. I use a DM5 Pro with the Zendrum now and am very happy with the sounds in it. To get to the volume parameter for one of the sounds, I have to scroll through menues. Much easier to just reach for a volume slider to get my toms just a little hotter for a song.

You also have to consider how many channels you want your module to take up on the snake when sending it to the mains. I have 4 outputs on my TD-8 so I sent the kick to one output, snare to one, toms to one and cymbals to another. If I assigned a special sound to a tom pad (such as the loop I made for the song Relax or the cowbell and hand clap sounds), I knew where the volume control was and those sounds could be mixed in and eq'd seperately. Doing your outputs this way makes it so much easier for the soundman to get the best drum sound possible. Global EQ on a drum module limits you because you can get the kick and toms happening with an eq setting and have the snare sound like hell. The way I did my outputs allowed Chris to eq those 4 channels seperately. I had "Y" splitter adapters on all 4 outputs so I could send FOH one line and a line to the 8 channel powered Carvin head and 4 speakers I had on stage with me.



I ran my own monitor mix by taking lines from the keys and guitars as well. I used 4 Carvin speakers with a 12" and a horn in each. 2 on each side of me pointed at me. I would have loved to have a 15" and a top cab on each side of me but I didn't get to re load my subs. That would have RULED! Selling the idea of making my drums a thousand watts louder on stage to the band didn't go over so well at first he he, not to mention the fact that Chris had to use about 11 channels for my drum sound. I loved the sound of my kick with a hip hop kick sound underneath it, PHAT! I had 2 Roland PD-9 pads on each side of me as well for special sounds and to trigger sequences.

The cheaper Ddrum triggers worked really well on the toms and snare. I had some problems with the kick trigger's solder connection breaking (I suspect because I used it on the batter side). I wanted to try it on the resonant side but never got around to it.

One really important thing to remember is if you aren't gonna muffle your drums, the trigger sound has to be the same pitch as the acoustic drum sound or it's gonna sound like 2 guitar strings out of tune. One cool thing I did was make my 14 inch floor tom sound way bigger by making the triggered sound a couple of octaves lower.


Hope this helps

[HBSPro]

use the ddrum triggers. Have used them with the dm4 and the dm5 do not use the stick on triggers.

[xero380]

thanks guys...my guitar player is the one who actually bought the stuff for the band off of ebay. hey got the Alesis DM4 and it has some pretty nice sounds. However the triggers I think are messed up as it doesn't always pick up no matter where you set the sensitivity. Now looking at pricing other triggers and looking for the possible best ones that trigger the rim and the head that are also durable. Any ideas?

I know a few people said the ddrum ones but is that it or something else?

thanks everyone for their input....

[xero380]

bump anyone?

[DrumAndDestroy]

just try and see what you like.