I bought a piezo sensor with attached socket, I also bought a $30. keyboard sustain pedal with a post under the pedal (mandatory for my project). Gorilla glue silicone was used to attach the sensor to the underside of the actual pedal (tap side facing down), and a plastic riser to the tap side of the sensor (the sensor I bought came with an interesting white plastic "riser" / dampener that I used here). And then I cut a small square of furniture leg padding to attach to the riser. I wanted the travel of the pedal to be as small as possible while at the same time eliminating false triggers from my foot and any noticeable noise of the mechanism..
The pictures say it all, and it works great as a floor hi-hat trigger "closing" sound for my heel - foot rests on the casing, and my heels downs the pedal for a hi-hat close sound.
I can't explain it, but my left foot likes to heel down sometimes. Also the Alesis hi-hat pedals are unreliable when it comes to closing hi-hat triggers (sometimes it just barks). Having this foot trigger on a spliced port will allow me to tailor the sensitivity and volume of the hi-hat closing sound as a stand-alone concern, and one that makes a heel (stomp) trigger possible.
I used a 1/4 in. splitter cable specifically made for Alesis gear. It comes out of my Surge "extra tom" port, and one split goes to the extra tom (forgoing the rim sound) and the second split goes to the foot pedal, where I change the assigned rim sound in the module to the "standard hi-hat pad" sound, and reduced the volume by 1/3. My left foot uses that for 3 ticks, and then my right for the 4th (on beat kick drum). I get a clean hi-hat tap sound every time !
A big thanks to Chaser for getting me up to speed on all this !
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