DIY Drum Trigger

ParsonsMatt

Alas, Tyranny
Nov 15, 2006
2,124
1
38
Athens, GA
www.myspace.com
What you need:

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Shit from Radio Shack. You need a 1/4" jack, a piezo, and some wire to extend the length a little bit. I assume you have a soldering iron shit like electrical tape and duct tape.

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A drum, in this case, a drum with a mesh head. This is for silent practicing and soon recording.

Step 1:

Get the piezo out of its plastic casing. I got the wrong models, unfortunately, so my piezos were attached to a circuit board and I had to really fight it to get the element out. I got part number 273-060, and the recommended part is 273-073A. This is what it looked like when I was done:

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Step 2:

I chose to make red positive and black ground. The inner ring on the piezo is positive and the outer is ground. The tip on the jack is positive, and the sleeve is ground... Easy enough right? Solder the red wire from the inner ring on the piezo to the tip on the jack, and the black wire from the outer ring to the sleeve of the jack.

Here is your drum trigger:

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And... that's it. I plan on lengthening the cables a bit to put the jack in a more convenient place, and then duct taping it onto the drum. Then I'll surround the trigger with mouse pad material for a bit of protection, and attach it to the drum head ( Probably duct tape, haven't decided yet :p ). When I get my interface, hopefully tomorrow, I'll post a clip with me actually playing the drum with the trigger...

Until then, you'll have to suffice with me just tapping on it:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=442291&songID=7894233

Trigger > Laptop sound card line in > KT Drum Trigger software > Superior 2.0 with no processing or editing at all. Nothing impressive but it proves that it works! When I make the "real" clip it'll be a lot better, I am sure, as I'll try to program some drums except for the snare and then "play" the snare along with it. Or maybe I'll "play" all the drums, one at a time... that'll be a disaster :lol

Anyway, this is part 1 of my "DIY Electronic Drum Set" series. Stay tuned for the next episode, where I put mesh heads on my entire kit, build triggers for all of them, and hook them up with a Behringer ADA8000... For tr00 drum playing and fake drum sound! :lol
 
cool man. i have been reading about diy electronic kits and triggers for the past year. i haven't tried yet but, maybe this will motivate me.
 
I just finished making a full kit all diy save the kick pedals and brain (trigger i/o). It didn't cost a whole heap and I learned alot! It's not the best thing from an acoustic players standpoint, but its fun as (Snare/Hat/4 toms/2 kicks/3 crashes 2w chokes/2 china/2 splash/Ride w bell)