small, button-style triggers?

[Raketemensch]

I’m building a system to attach to my http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caj%C3%B3n.

Has anyone designed a small, round, button-style trigger using piezos?

The Cajon is played using your hands, and I can get a very convincing drum roll out of it by “rolling” my 8 fingertips on it. I’m wonder what sort of trigger I could build (maybe a 3×5 area) that would do the same sort of thing.

The trick here is that these triggers will be hanging on the side of a square box, so I’m hoping to keep them as thin as possible.

I’ve got 20 piezo triggers on the way, as well as a very old trigger -> midi module that I will be cannibalizing to wire these piezos directly into, skipping the patch cables. This way, all I’ve got to do is plug the midi cables into this device, plug them into whatever sampler I’m using, and off I go. I’ve even got an old Yamaha SU10 that I used when I first got into eDrums, and it’s even battery-powered, so this could be a very self-contained unit. Just plug the homemade trigger pad into the SU10, plug it into the PA, and I’m done.

Any advice on materials that could be used, links to similar projects, etc would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,
Rake

Topic

[sylco]

Hello,
the matter may be how can you get bass soud and trebble sound separatly.
if i were you, i will try to put two piezos inside of the cajon, one one trebble area and one just under the bass area, unsing double sided foam tape and wired to the module with Keith Rapper piezo to switch adapter to the bass piezo. It may be work like a DIY two zones cymbal, but WITHOUT garantee of any kind!
Last thing, how would you get a quiet cajon? Or maybe your aim is to add some other sound to your cajon?

[Raketemensch]

Well, I’m not really looking to trigger with the cajon itself, I’m basically building a trigger “pad,” which I will attach to the side of one. So on the face of the cajon I have a normal cajon, but if I turn it sideways, I have a trigger pad.

I guess I’m mainly wondering what sort of materials folks are using to create multi-zone trigger pads.

[PFozz]

Hi Raketemensch,

Interesting project !

For multi-zone trigger pads, you can try one thin piece of MDF + 3 small cylinders of foam per zone.
Attach a piezo and 3 cylinders of foam (diameter=approx. 3 cm / height=approx. 4cm) under each piece of MDF and then fix all the obtained triggers to a thick and large piece of wood.
You can shape the small triggers the way you want depending on your needs but a space of at least 5mm between these triggers must be preserved (to avoid serious crosstalking issues).
Finally, put a large sheet of rubber over your newly created multi-zone trigger.

Set the threshold (module side) of each trigger to a value that is high enough to kill any residual crosstalking issues.
I’ve built such a thing in the past and the results were quite good.

Oh, and BTW, here’s a picture of my home made Cajons (the small one was a gift for my son ^^).
So easy to build and so fun to play !

Best regards.

www.eareckon.com

[Author]

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