My dope kick trigger

jgrills · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:28 am Post subject: My dope kick trigger

I've been working on building a good kick trigger for some number of months now. Considering my time, it would have been much cheaper to have bought a kick trigger, but this somehow turned into a mission.

I finally have it working to my satisfaction - hits every time for me, never double-hits. The sensor is a piezo, so you only get pulses when the switch is hit. To work around the issue that RB wants you to hold the pedal down for fast song selection, I added a bypass with a foot pedal containing a momentary switch - the pedal is one I had used to make my overdrive pedal, but for this cause re-wired it a bit shorter.

The only thing different between my final design and the pictures above is the way the project box attached to the post. I ended up drilling a small hole in the post, tapping threads into it, and then I flipped the project box over and mounted it to the post using a bolt. I put a large rubber spacer between the post and project box to keep the two from rattling against each other when the pad gets struck.

The trigger is built from a Sound Percussion Bass Practice Pad, purchased at Guitar Center. You can stick any pedal you want on it - I just wanted to show off my new pedal so I included it in the picture as well. Here's a link to the pad:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Sound-Percussion-SPA08-Bass-Drum-Practice-Pad-104482922-i1416020.gc

I modded the pad internally in this fashion, putting in the metal plate with the piezo attached, wired out to an RCA-style jack:

http://members.cox.net/ampage/triggers.htm

I then connected the pad to a circuit based off a design I had found on the rock band forums, except that I omitted the variable resistor and upped the 1M ohm resistor to a 10M ohm resistor, flipped the polarity of the RB connector, and added a bypass switch for a foot pedal with a momentary switch to make fast song selection in the menus work. Here's my circuit:

I want to give credit where credit is due, so here's the post describing the original cirtcuit:

http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?p=163804#post163804

Here are some shots of the project box internals and the circuit board. My shot of the back of the circuit board didn't come out well enough to post, but with these pictures and the circuit design above, the back side of the circuit board should be relatively straight forward to figure out:

Now I just need a certain drummer friend of mine to come over and really give this thing a beat-down to expose any remaining design flaws. He's busted up a couple of my previous kick trigger designs, but I'm confident this one will take all the abuse he can dish out and continue working as designed. You know who you are if you're reading this - let me know when you can come over and play!

Maybe some of you will build this trigger and make me feel better about all the time I spent. If you do, please post pics!

Jumpman · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:34 am Post subject:

D'oh, you beat me to it! I have the same practice pad (gibraltar branded but looks the same), and I've already got a piezo inside and it works great with my kickbox, but I have a KD-8 that prefer. But anyway yeah I plan on doing the simplified "kickbox lite" circuit to attach to the home-rolled kick trigger for a friend of mine. Once done the whole thing will have cost less in parts than what I spent just on the KD-8, so I think it's a great deal, assuming it works as intended. Smile

Nice job!

jgrills · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 3:04 am Post subject:

[edit - I folded the contents of this post into my main post above. I thought it better to have all the information in one place]

Jumpman · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:09 am Post subject:

Awesome! Let us know how the test goes Smile

jgrills · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:24 am Post subject:

We had a band night last night, and our band's drummer liked the pedal and pad. This was the first time he's liked one of my kick trigger designs, opting to use the new pad all night instead of going back to the stock Ion pedal.

Our guitarist tried it out and liked it as well - he plays drums at home, and asked if I'd build him one if he bought the parts. Of course I will for a band mate!

The pad survived the night working as perfectly at the end as it did at the beginning. I still have that other serious drummer friend I want to beat on it, but the initial reviews have been very positive!

jgrills · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:50 pm Post subject:

A friend of mine has asked me to make him one of these, but with a mesh head. I'm going to start looking into this as time permits. My current plan is to use the base, but take off the bass practice pad and mod a Remo practice pad to be a mesh-head trigger. I've already proven that the Remo pad will mount to this base.

Doc_SoCal · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 9:40 pm Post subject:

Looks well sorted, nice work.
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tequilapete · Band Member Joined: 29 Jan 2009 Posts: 1

I play in a band with jgrills, mostly guitar, sometimes bass. Just starting to play drums. He and I spent some time building one of his kick triggers for me over the weekend. The trigger is freakin' sweet! I just unlocked the Flawless Drumming achievement using it. Needless to say, it's a really, really nice kick trigger.

jgrills · Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 1:17 am Post subject:

Well, our amazing drummer who had exposed all the faults in every kick trigger I've ever designed came over tonight and played. He played about 5 hours on this trigger and loved it. He said it worked as well at the end of the night as it did from the first kick. He told me I should go into mass production on this trigger. I think this mod can now be treated as a serious and cheaper alternative to a KD8.

I'd love to know if anyone else does it.
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davidshek · Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 10:55 am Post subject:

jgrills · Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 11:44 am Post subject:

In all my searching for kick triggers, I never came across that one. It's a very good price on a finished kick trigger for sure. I might have to agree with you that it would be a better alternative for most people. Cutting the 26 gauge metal plate and getting it to fit in the practice pad does take a fair amount of effort.

The Kickbox interface adapter necessary for an commercial kick trigger, though, does double the price. But someone that could build my kick trigger could probably also build a Kickbox cheaply as well. Anyone have links for a DIY Kickbox circuit?

And to think how many hours I've spent trying to build an awesome kick trigger. Had I only known of that other trigger.... Well, at least I had fun.
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davidshek · Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 12:09 pm Post subject:

jgrills · Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 12:37 pm Post subject:

Yeah, you were right - mine doesn't need a Kickbox. The circuit I built and posted does that job, and the way it's mounted on the pole it keeps it nicely compact so the pedal is one self-contained unit that can be directly connected to the drums.

I edited my previous post to hopefully make it more clear. I was trying to say that the commercial kick trigger plus the Kickbox makes that solution twice the cost of my trigger solution. But anyone who can build my trigger could likely also build a DIY Kickbox as well and keep the price down to approximately what my solution costs.
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Wall-E · Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:57 am Post subject:

Could you use this circuit with a rock band pad to plug into the rock band set? I'd like to use a pad to pickup bass drum hits, rather than my current reed switch/real pedal/cardboard box setup

jgrills · Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 8:45 am Post subject:

I've tested it a bit with a RB1 kit, and it worked, but it would miss notes occasionally. That's almost certainly correctable just by lowering the resistor's value to probably 2 or 5 ohms.
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