Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Hi folks,

I did a little playing yesterday and thought you'all would be 
interested in the results:

1. The new RHH130 hi-hat works fine with the DTXpress-II as well as 
the DTXpress-I as near as I can tell.  I did not thoroughly test 
them as my family was waiting for me to come home to dinner, but 
initial tests seemed fine including foot chics and splashes and edge 
triggering for all DTXpress modules old and new.

2. Many of the RHH130's that came with our DTXpress-III Special 
Edition kits were bad.  We have been following the discussion here a 
bit and talked with "the man" in charge of these things at Yamaha.  
(FYI, his name is Dave Ksycki - pronounced 'si-kee' -- and his e-
mail is dksycki@... and phone number in Grand Rapids, MI is 
800-940-6606 x2; he's only available until 4pm Eastern time).  I 
understand he's the one working on swapping out bad units.  NOTE, at 
least one of the units we had worked partially -- it was not as 
variable in the 'second half' of the downward pedal range from the 
time it started to have effect until all the way down at which point 
the cymbal did not have a fully-closed sound).

3. I tried adapting the hi-hat for use with a Roland module, but 
found a major flaw that may prevent this from ever working.  The 
RHH130 has a "minimum resistance" value (about 1,000 ohms) even when 
fully closed that prevents the Roland module from registering a 
fully-closed position and really confuses the module (no harm though 
that I could tell!).  I will continue to explore ways to use this 
nice hi-hat with Roland (and other) modules, but it's not as trivial 
as I had thought or hoped.

FYI,

Ed