Drum pad sensitivity issue

[smilan]

Hi, I'm using a Roland pd-6 pad to trigger a SYNARE 3 synth drum clone module.
It works fine, but when I'm hitting the pad hard the synth plays a high pitch note and when I'm hitting the pad soft the synth plays a lower pitch note.
My question is if there's a way to reduce the dynamic range of the pad, so no matter how strong I hit it, the synth will play the same tone?

 

[NoisyIndividual]

These drum pads are usually nothing more than a Piezo transducer connected to a jack socket.
They can put out a few volts, so maybe you could try putting 2 back to back diodes across the output. This will at least limit the maximum voltage it will output to the 500 - 600 mV the diodes will clamp at.
Or if you want a lower max voltage use shottky/SMPS diodes, which I have seen to go down to 200mV or less.

 

[ccaudle]

I don't think your "clone" is wired correctly, as far as I can tell the original did not behave that way.

 

[smilan]

I don't think your "clone" is wired correctly, as far as I can tell the original did not behave that way.

I don't have the original and it's been a while since I played on one so I can't compere my clone to the original.
Do you think it's a mutter of "wrong wiring" or different Piezo transducer?

 

[NoisyIndividual]

The original synare had a small speaker stuck to its pad as a trigger.

Maybe it wasn't velocity sensitive, just a trigger, and your clone has been modified to be velocity sensitive?

 

[smilan]

The original synare had a small speaker stuck to its pad as a trigger.

Maybe it wasn't velocity sensitive, just a trigger, and your clone has been modified to be velocity sensitive?

Good question...
Unfortunately, the Helensson kit comes without schematic, so it's hard to say what exactly going on there. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with how it sounds and with the diode that reducing the pad sensitivity it became easy to deal on stage.

 

[ccaudle]

I apologize, my previous comment was completely off. I had seen some Synare performances which did not seem to indicate that amplitude to pitch connection and mistakenly thought that indicated a characteristic of the design, rather than a particular setting.
This video would seem to indicate that you were probably on the right track with clamping the amplitude coming out of your Roland pad, probably just a sensitivity difference: