Equipment > Triggers and Hardware

STRIKE Hi Hat ready for the dumpster? Fix it for 50 cents. No joke.

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Purpledc:
So this needs its own thread so it doesn't get lost.   Looks like a solution to the whole strike hi hat debacle has been floating around for a couple weeks and just now are people catching on, doing it and finding it works. 

So what is the problem?

Turns out the spring that separates the top cymbal from the bottom cymbal is too short.   About 3/8" too short.   I did a lot of experimenting and found the best washer is actually the felt washer that your lower cymbal sits on.  Its the perfect thickness.  You simply lay that on top of your spring assembly and then place your cymbal on that and tighten it down.  If you don't have one you can use the washer off of one of your wing nuts but note it will be  a bit too thick and you will want a thinner one but you can use it and it will work just the same it will just work.   

I had a hi hat that was hopeless.   And seriously with just that washer this thing is flawless.  I cant get it to act up again.  And what do you know when I change the settings and do the calibration it actually works and makes changes to the feel.  Anyone with strike hi hat I urge you to give it a shot.   just remember put the washer on the spring, then lay the cymbal on it and crank it down.  Don't adjust the height as the whole point is to make sure the spring keeps constant pressure on the cymbals and raising the cymbal too much will put you back to square one.

cyormach:
yep it works.  I just stretched the spring as a hoot and found out by accident.
  Now Alesis needs to get on board and supply longer springs (or spacers)

Purpledc:
UPDATED SOLUTION:


All you have to do is pull your spring assembly from your hi hat.

Remove the plastic plug from the top of the spring.  Flip the plastic over so the flat part sits on top of the spring.  The hole will keep it centered and you dont need to have the plastic attached to the spring.  Just rest the cymbal on top and let it rest like before.   It works and doesnt require anything to accomplish.  in fact I find the in between sounds to be much better.

cyormach:
saw  you post this on the alesis community.  ;D

mmdurrant:
I think in their testing Alesis must have just worn the hell out of the spring. Its only purpose is putting pressure on the HH controller. If they used a mechanism that provided _zero_ resistance to existing hihat assemblies (...I'd think making the cymbals heavier would be an obvious solution), it would work far better.

On a semi-related note, I'd be interested to talk to a patent attorney regarding the patent on the Hall effect sensor. I had asked a buddy who does EE professionalls how he would make a hihat controller. After I explained which part of the kit a hihat was, he told me about this interesting behavior of perpendicular magnetic fields and how you could easily use it to detect hi hat states. That was his first solution to the problem - which tells me the US PTO granted a patent that doesn't pass the 2 major tests of novel and non-obvious. In fact, if you google "hall effect patent", you'll see a number of ridiculous things people have patented implementing what effectively is e=mc2. A well understood property of physics applied to X. Just like all the ridiculous patents for "... on the Internet" and nearly _ANY_ patent involving software.

I have a feeling Alesis doesn't pursue the legal route because they have some ridiculous patents themselves. In fact - they patented their hi-hat implementation. The problem - again - the notion of making an electronic hihat function like a real hihat, using the exact same principles they utilized on the non-"real" hihat controllers (it's an expression pedal with a spring - I use one to have spring-loaded wah on my Nord keyboard)... but moving the pieces around. The only reason they filed it in the first place was to stifle competition. That way they can charge ridiculous amounts of money for putting $120 worth of parts in a plastic case (the screen is the most expensive component followed by the custom PCBs)  and selling it for $1k+. Yeah, Roland does it too - and the most noticeable effect of lack of competition is we, the customers, pay ridiculous amounts for sub-par technology.

A motivated person with basic EE knowledge could take an Arduino unit (2 teensy boards would work well), a Raspberry PI, and one of many available hi-fi audio DACs and build their own sans screen (if you can program an Arduino, writing a software interface becomes trivial) for under $100. Yes, you have to get samples - there are at least a dozen commercially available drum sample packages under $100 that are of equal or better quality to the samples on the Strike.  And when I say "trivial", it is for any decent EE with a bit of CS knowledge. The software interface Alesis created is the most naive implementation available. No tricky proprietary protocols or drivers - they just expose the SD card port.  Windows has support for SD cards over USB built in. A comp sci student could implement it with an Arduino in an afternoon.

TLDR: Alesis could double what they spend on building the Strike and still make money hand over fist. In fact they could crush Roland in the market by doing so... I don't know what is stopping them.

If anyone from Alesis is reading this post - I write boring L2/L3 networking code for cloud/SDN right now...and while the packet-switched network is the greatest invention of the 20th century, music is the greatest invention of mankind and I'd vastly prefer using my skills and knowledge "in concert" (heh) with a company that has established manufacturing facilities and brand recognition. Else I'm going to save my pay for the next 6 months, quit my day job, and start making drum controllers that the folks at Steven Slate have designs for but prefer not to bleed the golden goose. The ADC routines for triggering are public knowledge and there's a piece of hardware everyone carries with them that would make a fantastic configuration interface. I've already prototyped the "run 2 teensy slaves using the Pi as the master" and am currently evaluating SoCs to replace the Pi. nVidia's Xavier product looks like the ideal solution and I'm just waiting to get my hands on the dev kit...

</rant>

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