Alesis DM5 / D4 drum trigger units

[spellchecker]

Has anyone used one or does anyone have one?

I'm interested in building my own electronic drum kit, having recently made a couple of home made drum triggers for a roland spd-s.

i know the D4/DM5 takes up to 12 trigger inputs and can also output the trigger input as MIDI. does anyone have any useful experience or advice to pass on?

thanks

[Guest lime ruined my life]

http://www.harmony-central.com/Synth/Data/Alesis/DM5-01.html

[HeinzHines]

Ive used a DM5 ...not as an out and out drum machine but for drum replacement triggers....comes with some good ready to go drum samples anyway....pretty easy to use aswell...

[Alex]

Used a D-4 at uni - great piece of kit (live, cleaning up mixes or just evening out songs. Used the MIDI out to trigger a step sequencer which is ACE like Duracell. Very highly recommended! I use VST triggers now for mixes, but if I see a cheap D4 it's mine.

[Hog]

I know a little bit about triggers from what I have read about Gene Hoglan who triggers his kick drums. He morphs around 6 different kick drum sounds to get a cool overall thump.

So would you trigger everything Spellchecker?

[spellchecker]

well our drummer uses a roland spd-s to trigger samples; it allows a footswitch which we have already built and are using. it also allows two acoustic triggers, which we have made. they will probably be used on the kick and snare. it'd be nice to get a more dancey kick drum sound, or a really kicky click drum sound to accompany the live drums.

me personally, i plan to build a fully triggered kit made from tablemats and mouse pads. and some timber.

[Hog]

That sounds pretty cool! How much would it be roughly, to make a DIY triggered kit?

[spellchecker]

taking a very diy approach, something like this:

Alesis D4/DM5 from ebay: 100-150 quid

Kick drum pedal from ebay: 30 quid

12 x piezo transducers: 39p each from maplin

12 x 6mm TS jacks: 19p each from www.cpc.co.uk in quantities over 10

Lots of single core cable with braiding: 100m reel costs about 12 from www.cpc.co.uk

so that's somewhere around the 150-200 mark. from there you need to make your trigger pads. for things like snares, toms and extra percussion pads, i'd probably use a mouse mat glued to a table mat, obtained from charity shops or something. the piezo transducer would actually be placed inside the mouse mat to reduce contact/impact wear.

i've been warned against using plastic frisbees as cymbals, but the temptation is too great, so i'm going to try to make it work. some hard rubber insulation should help things.

for the kick drum trigger, a solid block of wood with more substantial rubber/sturdy foam padding for the transducer will be necessary too.

you will also need to make things like a frame for all your pads to hang from. if you don't plan to be too mobile with the kit, then you can simply make up some basic structure with timber from B&Q.

for a hihat, you simply use a normal percussion pad - you can use a normal guitar amp footswitch to switch a pad between hihat modes - the D4/DM5 handles everything else for you.

i'm looking to buy one of the alesis units quite soon, though not sure when i'll have time to create the kit itself.

[Compuphonic]

well our drummer uses a roland spd-s to trigger samples; it allows a footswitch which we have already built and are using. it also allows two acoustic triggers' date=' which we have made. they will probably be used on the kick and snare. it'd be nice to get a more dancey kick drum sound, or a really kicky click drum sound to accompany the live drums.

me personally, i plan to build a fully triggered kit made from tablemats and mouse pads. and some timber.[/quote']

SPD-11 has built in sounds that are reasonable - we used to use one of these with a live drummer at the Pelican a long time ago. Works pretty well.

The Alesis D4 is very good for triggering from tape etc, how well it works live depends on how sensitive your drummer is to latency - I seem to remember the D4 is about 25ms

Not a problem if you are using the internal sounds but if you want to trigger external sounds factor in another 10-15ms midi latency and it starts to become noticable.

I tend to find the Alesis drum sounds (while very good) are generally a bit too rock for me..

[threeornothing]

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

Seen a few DM5's go for as little as 50 bucks on ebay I think...would love one myself....

[Jam]

Hey there, I currently use a D4 to trigger the practise kit I've converted into an electronic kit.

To start with I tried using the original heads/foam that came with the kit but after much experimentation I found that the best way is the use mesh heads with off-centred triggers. Just mount the piezo like this camera film canister cut down to size > foam insert for canister (make sure it's out the top of the canister) > piezo > a closed cell foam to touch the head itself (something like a Nerf dart) et voila!

You can get everything on the cheap from birmingham drum centre, I think around 80 for the kit, 15 for a set of plastic cymbals to trigger and 5 each for the mesh heads!

hope that helps you!

p.s. any more info head to electronicdrums.com or the Yahoo DIY E-drum group (sorry don't have the address)