#THREE WIRE PIEZO DISC PATCH#

Solder one strand to each of these two points. Solder the small gauge wire to the piezo disc. In considering length, at some point (maybe in the hundreds of feet), the resistance of the wire will be too great for the trigger pulse to overcome, but you don't really need more than twenty feet of wire, do you?ģ. Repeat the above with the speaker wire, but make the piece as long as you want your trigger run to be. You can use shielded cable, but it's not really necessary.Ģ. You only need two wires, so if your cable has more ignore them. Cut a 6' length of the small gauge wire and strip both ends. Your trigger runs will probably wind up getting stepped on at some point, so it is better to use tougher cable for the length of the runs.ġ. However, you probably don't want to have long runs of such small gauge wire, because of its weakness. The physical reality requires a little more work - soldering wire to a piezo disc is a bit delicate, and needs to be done with small gauge wire. It's as simple as soldering a wire to the disc. Making a drum trigger from a piezo is theoretically straightforward. With drum triggers, we're not interested in using the piezo as a musical pickup, just as an indicator of an event. Again, the same principle of translating physical energy into electricity is at work here, although with guitar pickups what is sent out electrically is a continuous signal, analogous to the vibrations of the guitar strings.

Piezos are also used in under- the-saddle pickups for acoustic guitars. When placed on a drum, a piezo disc translates the energy of the stick or pedal hitting the drum into an electrical pulse. In short, piezos work by creating electricity when physical stress is applied. The purely pragmatic amongst you can skip this part and just chalk the workings of piezo triggers up to some form of magic. If you can't find any try buying one of those Radio Shack buzzers and tearing it apart to get the piezo element though it's expensive and more trouble than you need to go through. Your other option would be mail order from a place like Mouser or All Electronics. I got a handful for about 5¢ each at an electronics warehouse in Portland. Piezo discs can be found inside small black buzzers sold by Radio Shack, but there are far cheaper ways to get them. You also may be able to rig up something if you have a MIDI device with an 'external clock' or 'sync' input on it. To make any of this worthwhile, you'll also want some kind of drum module or keyboard with 'trigger ins' on it. 1/4' male jacks (one per trigger) soldering iron, solder, electrical tape, etc.

#THREE WIRE PIEZO DISC PATCH#

speaker wire or patch cord cable (however long you need your trigger cables to run).

small gauge, double-stranded wire (about 6' of wire per trigger).

piezo discs (at least one for each drum you want a trigger on, preferably more in case you screw up).

Three wire piezo disc