GEARREVIEW
BY CARL ALBRECHT
Yamaha DT50K & DT50S Drum Triggers
and toms. The dual trigger feature allows you the snare trigger might react to hard hits on
KEY FEATURES to add separate sounds to the rims or accented the toms. Softer playing never gave me any
Quick Set Up samples of the same instrument. Be as creative issues. For the harder playing I just tweaked the
Dual Trigger Features as you like. I tested the two on the kick and settings enough to avoid the problem of false
Plays Well with Other
Systems several snares in my studio for this review. triggering… And I was good to go.
I followed the easy instructions for a quick For live events when I just want to add similar
set up. Clamping the triggers to the rims was or same samples of the drum being triggered
The new drum triggers just released by Yamaha a simple process. No surprises there… Then I actually like a bit of cross talk between the
Corporation proves once again that Yamaha is running the cables to the interface was a drums because it feels more real to me. That’s
always on the forefront of new drum technology breeze. Be sure the dual snare trigger plugs a personal choice… you can do what works
whether it’s acoustic or electronic drum designs. into a dual input or you’ll need to split the signal for you. If the sample is meant to be clearly
The DT50K trigger is for the bass (kick) drum via a stereo to two mono patch cable. The a special effect I’ll make it cleaner… such as
and the DT50S is a dual trigger for the snare look of the triggers is pretty cool too. I love the adding a tambourine or clap sample to the
chrome-plated casing… very classy and sleek. snare on different sections of a song.
So this gets two thumbs up for me.
For studio production work we often layer or
If you use the DTX series digital drums Yamaha trigger sounds in post-production editing.
has firmware updates for the DTX modules that With triggers I can actually give a producer or
include the new DT50K/S trigger settings to engineer the option to hear samples as part of
make it easy for set up. For this test I actually the tracking session. This can be very inspiring.
used an older Yamaha sound module and then Again it’s all a matter of personal choices and
another drum pad just to see how the triggers the creative process. The one thing with any
would act with non-matching manufacturers. trigger is that there can always be a slight
In this case it was a Roland SPD-20. An older millisecond delay in the sampled sound being
model yes, but still capable of all the tweaking activated by the trigger. In live settings this is
needed to work well with these triggers. Actually something we really can’t hear unless there
there was not much tweaking needed because is an actual problem with the sound being
the Yamaha triggers just worked perfectly. sampled. This rarely happens. In the studio
when you see the sounds on top of each other
Of course depending on your style of playing “in the digital grid” you might see the slight
you may need to adjust things like sensitivity delay. But, I don’t recommend being too quick
and threshold levels to “fix” what you think is a problem. Use your
to avoid cross talk ears, and if the sound seems off, you can move
from other drums. the sampled track until it lines up perfectly…
I purposely played Or until you think it sounds right. That is also a
extremely creative choice.
see
hard
how
to
much
volume would cause The Yamaha triggers performed greatly for this
the triggers to react. test and I salute the Yamaha design team for
The DT50K trigger once again bringing great tools to the drumming
on the kick never community. Salute! Carl
false triggered when
I was slamming the
snare
and
toms.
There were a few
moments
42
May Jun 2017
where
STREET PRICE
$89.99, either model
CONTACT
usa.Yamaha.com
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