Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Nick,

Our problem solving seems to have left a lot to be desired in your 
case. The kit/song predicament has been gnawing at my brain (what's 
left of it); I had a feeling that it had come up before. Lo and 
behold, if you search the archives for "Assigning a kit to a song," 
you'll find that on March 12 of last year, someone asked the same 
question and received what would have seemed to be a straightforward 
answer from the always reliable Walt--pressing "save" should 
associate a song with a selected kit once and for all--but this time 
to no avail. No one else had any ideas about it. There have been 
complaints about fluid settings from the very beginning. Maybe 
people just learned to live with them, though I agree with you that 
this tendency in the module is annoying and perplexing. Maybe we'll 
come up with a solution yet, even if we have to get Yamaha involved 
again.

It's amazing how many things come up on the board that stump you, 
regardless of how long you've been a member. I think that you can 
disable a pad's choke by setting the pad type in the trigger menu to 
one that doesn't support it. I've never done it, but I seem to 
recall someone saying so. 

As for the bow/rim interaction on, I assume, the Yamaha stereo 
cymbals. I'm not sure that this would technically be an issue of 
crosstalk (though it would be on a dual-zone cymbal). This is a 
common, legitimate complaint about this type of cymbal. I think of a 
stereo cymbal's reliablity as measured on two fronts: (1) its 
tendency to make a sound other than the one intended and (2) its 
tendency to make any sound at all. Though some stereo cymbals are 
better than others in both cases or in one of them, they all suffer 
from similar maladies, in my experience. One of the problems is 
that, given the geography of bow and rim, it's often hard to strike 
one without implicating the other. The one you strike first is the 
one you'll get, and the harder you hit, the more likely you are to 
strike the wrong one first. Tilt has something to do with it as 
well. With some of them, hitting the rim in a certain spot--usually 
off to the side--will result in the bow sound. I've tried the 
Yamahas, a Roland or two, and the Pintech Zenbals. At the higher 
reaches of the Roland spectrum (where the prices get shamefully 
high), the problem is minimal. Simply put, I think that Yamaha has 
to make a round cymbal, with more real estate and more attention to 
detail. To my mind, price being a consideration, the Pintech Zenbal 
stereo cymbal marks a huge step forward in performance. Other people 
may have had a different reaction to it, but mine was that it was 
vastly better in reliability on both fronts. In fact, it almost 
never gives no sound at all; once in a while, it will give the 
unintended one. (Stephen recently upgraded to all Zenbals; he should 
be able to add valuable information.)

I think I went over my 2 cent limit, but interesting questions all.

Ed
--- In DTXpress@yahoogroups.com, Nick Carroll <njcarroll56@y...> 
wrote:
> 
> Thank you, Vernon Graner.  I saw your reply to a new DTXpress 
owner, and - as a relatively new owner myself - I checked out your 
very good DTXpressions.com web site.  Those tips & tricks are very 
useful.  I am particularly interested in TIps & Tricks #6, about 
crossfading the bell with cymbal, so that hitting the top part of 
the ride cymbal pad (the more responsive part) will get more of a 
bell sound.  I'll try that out and let you know how I get on.
> 
> There is one problem I haven't resolved yet, despite some pointers 
by the list Editor and Underneathheaven (thanks for your efforts, 
guys!). 
> 
> And that is, how do you assign a particular kit to a song, so that 
when you change to that song, the kit changes also?  The factory-set 
songs #1 thru #95 all do this, so I figure there must be a way.  Ed 
suggested I check the UT Midi Program Change Table Kit assignments 
in the Utilities menu.  So I went in and changed things around, but 
it made no difference.  When I changed from one song I had 
programmed to another, the brain still defaulted to Kit #40 GM std 
1.  Am I missing out a step?
> 
> Here are two others posers: Is there any way to stop the choke 
function on the ride cymbal rim?  And sometimes when I hit the ride 
cymbal, I get the ride-rim sound instead - is there a way to reduce 
the crosstalk between them?
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
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