The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Okay, so my piece of shit Ion iED01 has pissed me off enough that I am positive I want to replace it. Because it sucks.

I already have an Alesis ControlPad, which is pretty decent, but it's only got the 8-zone trigger thing. It also has two trigger pad inputs and two pedal inputs.

For the trigger pads I've basically decided I want a pair of Pintech tube triggers (since they're versatile and responsive - I've played on kits with them before and I like them), but I'm not sure what to do about the pedals.

Does anyone know if the Alesis ControlPad kick pedal input is velocity-sensitive? If so, are there any good velocity-sensitive trigger pedals which don't cost a whole buttload? (The cheapest I could find is Roland's v-drum one which is $150)

Next, I'll need one (or two, depending on the answer to the previous question) momentary switch pedals for the hi-hat (and kick, depending etc. etc.). Any suggestions? Alesis makes a decent-looking one for $50 but would one of the many $20 piano-style pedals do in terms of feel/response/not-sliding-around? (I already know I don't want to use the pedals with came with the iED01 because they are shit, like the rest of the iED01.)

Finally, any good mounting solutions for the ControlPad? Alesis claims they make an adapter to make it fit on a snare stand but I can't actually find it anywhere (not even on their site). Supposedly the Roland APC33 works but it's spendy and hard to find, and I can't find official confirmation of whether it actually is compatible, and anyway it seems like just getting a little stool for it to sit on might work better anyway.

Any suggestions?

The Roland APC33 is rock solid as a clamp, but you'd need a cymbal stand or the like to mount it on. My SPD-6 sits nicely on it (also on the same stand is kludged a shelf with a little mixer, reverb stomp box and portable cd player--works good). Momentary switch pedal? Like a Boss FS-5U? Meh. To quote Paul Simon, they're always "slip-slidin' away". Never was able to keep them from creeping around on the floor. Putting them on a rigid surface (instead of the carpet) helped a little, but not much.

For the longest time, I'd had the SPD-6 sitting on one of those old typing tables (with the side wings that fold down), and two FS-5Us sitting underneath for the kick & hat control. Imagine Albatross playing on that, heh. Which he did, actually.

By momentary switch I was thinking more along the lines of this or maybe this - something intended to be worked constantly with the foot. Yeah those little stupid pedals like that Boss or whatever are crap.

And yeah I knew the snare stand adapter still required a snare stand for it to be adapted to.

Aha. The HHat pedal, which I don't have experience with, looks like the Roland HHat pedal, which I do. Heavy, stable, but like driving a manual transmission car it takes a little while for the muscle memory to find the trigger point consistently. More importantly, they feel like an acoustic kit's pedals.

Albatross has a piano pedal like that one, he might be able to tell you more about its action and feel.

The APC33 mounts to the vertical post of a stand. I'm looking at my snare stand and I don't think the main post'd go tall enough for you to play comfortably if you went the Roland route.

Okay, it's the acoustic drum pedal feel I'm looking for. The pedals which came with the piece of shit drum machine are shaped like that but they don't have any 'give' - they go down maybe a couple millimeters and then bottom out (and that's where the triggering happens), so I end up constantly triggering it when I really don't mean to. I'm used to real drums, where your feet aren't constantly propped up at an awkward angle...

By "roland HHat pedal" do you mean the FD8, though? That one's analog and is intended to work with the VDrums, which is certainly not useful for the ControlPad (since it only sends out GMIDI messages, which only allows for open/close/pedal-down on hihat) and since it's analog I'd be concerned that it'd constantly look like it's closed (and circuitry which looks for a specific resistance as the trigger point would explain why it feels like a clutch on a car, since otherwise it might try to trigger outside the pedal's range). Plus, it's about $120 which is rather a lot more than I'd like to spend on this. I don't see any other Roland hi-hat trigger pedals on zzounds or musiciansfriend, so I'm guessing they don't make one that's just a momentary switch.

The Alesis pedal *looks* like it has travel (especially from the large photo, but the description doesn't say, and since it hasn't actually been released yet there's no reviews of it that I can find. It also looks like the trigger point is where it bottoms out, which is good since that's much more like actual drums.

FD-8, yeah. It didn't work so hot with my old brain (Alesis DM4, which only rec'd on/off messages, and the FD-8, like their dual trigger cymbals, sent extra information that was ignored). Quite pricey, agreed. And now sold and gone, heh.

Does Musician's Friend still have their 45-day no questions asked money back guarantee?

I think so, although frankly I'm much more likely to just go to Guitar Center this weekend or something.

I just got this (completely unsurprising) response from Alesis:

Eric wrote:The Kick and HI-hat input will only work with momentary non-latching
footswitches.

The 2 trigger input however will respond to velocity sensitive trigger.

That's pretty much what I was expecting. So, now to find some decent momentary non-latching footswitches.

Ooh, I just had an idea, inspired by the Omega Pedal for Rock Band: I could just buy a real drum pedal, put some metal on its beater, and then have it wham against an open pair of contacts, completing the circuit. (Or I could buy an Omega Pedal, which does exactly the same thing.)

fluffy wrote:...put some metal on its beater...

Just waking up, and reading this with my mind still sleep-lucid has images of a Boris Vallejo fluffy on the cover of Heavy Metal magazine.

Whoa.

Now I'm in the right state of mind for mixing drum tracks, heh.