Hey fellas. Quick question for ya. I'm waiting on a Roland TD3. I don't know too much about it, but I've read enough to know that it does require a variable hi-hat controller. A variable hi-hat controller some people like to call the FD8.
I guess, technically, that is an eff word. Not the eff word I've been using, but it is an eff word none the less.
What. Why you lookin at me like that?
Oh. Frustration. Frustration is the eff word I'm referring to. Since I've found out about this thing, I have been searching high and low for any kind of technical data that can give me some kind of clue as to what the hell a variable hi-hat controller has to do to do whatever it does do to make the module respond to the varying variables of the variable hi-hat controller. Not low.
But yeah. You google Roland FD8, you may realize at or around page 426 of 270,000, that maybe someone might wanna sell you one. And they all tell you the same darn thing, "Thanks to Roland's new FD-8 Hi-Hat Controller, drummers can get more realistic hi-hat sounds with smooth transitions between open and closed."
But no one wants to tell you how it does it. Nobody. No one at all. It's like a big secret or something.
Now I'm no rocket pharmacist, but I kinda get the feeling that it may work the same way a lot of these other variable hi-hat controllers work. But... With these other controllers, they may tell you a list of brand names that their product would work with, and the Roland TD3 doesn't seem to make the list. And I've heard about Rolands "Reverse polarity", and it makes me wonder...
I just halted progress on my DYM Variable Hi-Hat Controller. I'm at the point now where it's time to ask questions so I don't totally do something that may be unreversible. Kinda like the Celica I used to own. I had to park on an incline because it was unreversible. You try to put it in reverse and all you get is a neat sound and this burning smell.
Well... I want a neat sound, but I can live without the burning smell.
So... This is what I have so far. A pedal and a turny thing.
Now what?
No, I took the pot, gears and linkage out of an old wah pedal that was converted into a volume pedal before it became something used to help fill the vacant area in a box full of crap I don't know why I'm keeping. And I'm mounting that stuff to a spring loaded non variable hi-hat controller I had laying around.
I'm guessing the controller works on resistance, but I can't find which way the pot is supposed to turn, so I don't know which side I need to mount it on. I don't wanna end up with it wide open in the closed position, or worse than that... Totally wrong altogether.
So if one of you brain surgeonesque totally rad dudes can offer some advice, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks yo.