diy drums and settings... having troubles

[cmjohn1976]

Hey everyone! First time post here, and I've done plenty of reading. I have the 56 input megadrum with position sensing and I'm building my own pads from a kids drum set using a design similar to the alesis dm10 pads. Rim trigger piezo is mounted to 1/8" paneling board cut to fit inside shell mounted to inside using L brackets to the back of lugs. Head pad is glued to a sheet of mylar sandwiched between two 1" polyfoam (foam mattress type) pads. This set up comes to 1/4" above rim when it rests on the rim trigger support disk and I'm using remo silentstroke mesh heads.

Now that ice explained my design I present my problem, after several hours getting settings right so that I go no xtalk between rim and head triggers, and getting thresholds close enough to work with I find that my snare pad (the only one I've worked on)seems to miss triggers for drum rolls and I get no buzz roll triggers at all everything shows either head or rim triggers. Is it my pad design or could there be settings I still need to mess with?

Thanks ahead for any help you might have

[ignotus]

You should post a screenshot of your pad settings so we can suggest something.

[cmjohn1976]

ok now that im back at home where i can pull things up here is a SS of my current snare settings, the midi data is showing what i get with a very even drum roll in the center of the head.

[ignotus]

At a first glance, first you should calibrate highlevel properly and then untick the Auto Highlevel box. Then, if it still doesn't trigger properly, try raising minscan. If you let the stick bounce freely on the head in the centre and it misses most hits, the threshold is probably too high. Also, the construction of the pad might be a factor here - I've never tried that sort of reflection plate design but you might want to try packing the mylar disc tighter against the head.

[dmitri]

I understand the problem in the screenshot is that for similar strength hits you get wide range of velocity, right?
1. How did you come up with HiLevel 750?
2. After coming up with HiLevel setting, why didn't you disable HighLevel Auto?
3. I understand it is a mesh type pad. With mesh type pads you usually have to increase MinScan to capture whole half wave with a peak. How much depends on the length of the half waves (frequency) which depends on the sizes of a pad and piezo.

Also, the rim zone's HighLevel and 3rd zone MidPoint don't seem to be set right and it will cause wrong rim triggering on head hits and vice verse.