drums and piezo sensors

[Dave Halliday]

>     Once I adapted the same flat disc type piezo buzzer as a drum trigger. 
>      I found that the interface circuitry was easy.  If my memory serves 
>      me well, I just ha lf wave rectified the output and limited it with a 
>      zener before driving a CD406 9 inverter with a feedback cap so it 
>      would function as a one shot.  Th hardest part was soldering the 
>      wires to the disc and making a nice silicone envelope ar ound it so 
>      the wires wouldn't pull out.  I taped the "button with a pigtail" to 
>      my buddy's tom-toms on his drum set they worked very well. 


>      
>     Someone wrote a nice mail about margarine containers as
>     diy-electro-drum trigger, and someone came up with the idea to use
>     rubber pads instead (mouse pads). Now, beeing in the little local



An excellent source of nice rubber pads is a local offset print shop.  
They are called "blankets" and carry the ink from the plate to the
paper. Blankets are made of a few layers of fabric and rubber with a
smooth surface.  If the press grabs too many sheets of paper at once,
this can dent the surface ( smash the blanket ) to the point where it
has to be thrown out.  Ask the shop to save their old blankets!
They don't go through a lot of them but will probably have one or two 
every month and these are usually tossed away.

The blankets are thin but very bouncy and you can glue several of them 
together ( or glue one over a mouse pad ) to get the right resiliance.



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