Red pad registering double hit

[cigano]

Hi Steve,

I am back and this time with a Band Hero Drums that I bought to replace my old Guitar Hero Drums.

I am such a lucky guy that I am the first one to use this section of the forum...

So here is the thing, I bought the Band Hero Drums and I am quite happy with it, I think it is way better and more solid than the GH Drums.

It was working fine and I was able to finish songs in medium with 5 stars, more than 95% and 100 note streak.

This last weekend I was playing and noticed that although I was hiting every note I wasn't doing more than 25 note streak.

Played a bit in the recording studio and noticed that the red pad was registering double hits when I would hit only once and sometimes if I play the yellow cymbal or the blue pad, the red pad also registers one hit! Also noticed that the rubber where you hit it in the red pad is a little bit loose.

If I open the drum kit and access the inside of pads do you think I will be able to find and fix the problem?

Thanks for your help once again!

BTW I was really surprised to see Band Hero and DJ Hero sections in the forum. You guys rock!

[SteveAdmin]

Hi again cigano! You are getting to be quite a regular around here!

Firstly with your 'double hit' issue - The likely cause is that one of the wires on the sensor inside the drum pad has come loose - it will still function as it is held in place by an anti vibration compound but the electrical connection will not be secure.

While we do stock new pads in our Band Hero Parts Store we think that unless your pad is physically damaged (you said the rubber had come loose?) you can just replace the sensor inside the drum pad. Have a look at our solderless drum repair kit and decide which would be the best for you. If you are thinking about trying to resolder the original wire back onto the sensor we would advise you not to bother - once you have scraped off the anti vibration compound (tiresome!) you will have to have a temperature controller soldering station and the correct flux and the contact time is around 2 seconds max as more than this will burn the ceramic coating off the sensor (and the reside of the white compound which you could not scrape off will taint the tip of your soldering station) We speak from experience - this is not a viable option!

Thanks for being the 'virgin' poster in the Band Hero section - it is still quite new at the moment but we are developing it as rapidly as we can and your appreciation is gratefully recieved! Now you are a seasoned poster and repairer feel free to come back and post again about anything you wish!

Cheers

[punchme]

I'm in a somewhat similar pickle as the original poster. I've already tried some solutions and am hitting nothing but dead ends, so I figured I'd do a post before taking the next steps. Alas, my tale of woe is a bit on the long side.

I've got the Band Hero kit for Wii. For a couple months I was in good shape, but then one day my red pad started acting up such that it would respond if I hit it in one area, but not in another. I found my way to this site and bought one of the solderless replacement kids, swapped it out myself, and was ecstatic.

...that is, for a couple weeks. I then started to have the "double hits" symptom just like the original poster: Hitting either the yellow cymbal or blue drum would often cause the red to fire as well. I opened up the kit and wondered if maybe the sensor or its connecting wires were somehow loose, so I tried taping the sensor down to the back of the pad, though wasn't sure if that was a good idea. Needless to say, in the process of opening it up and fiddling with it repeatedly as I tried/tested these approaches, the black wire's connection to the sensor managed to snap off completely, so I gave up and placed the order for more sensors. This time I decided to just buy TWO since they're cheaper in bulk and that way if I managed to break another I'd not have to wait 5 days to try yet another test!

Once again, the swap-out seemed a success and I was in business for a couple weeks. And now today, we're back in the double hit zone. Having become adept at opening things up and now verrrry cautious about the possibility of snapping one of those wires loose from where they connect to the sensor, I verrrry carefully opened it up. I was surprised to find that the sensor was still 100% intact where I left it, and none of the wires visibly coming loose (that I could see). Thinking again of my prior idea of taping the wires down, I verrrry carefully taped them down to the back of the pad just after they come out of the sensor and carefully reassembled. Unfortunately, the problem was the same.

I then found this thread in the forum and saw the previous poster's point about the rubber having come loose. Indeed, when it's all put together, and I palm the top of my rubber pad and "wiggle" it, I do find it's noticeably looser than the others. This is clearly a side-effect of having had to man-handle the rubber top off so many times to get at that stinkin' sensor to replace it. I thought I had found the smoking gun, thinking that maybe some wobble coming from that might be triggered by a hit on the adjacent pads, in turn activating the red's sensor. I had my wife "pull down" on those back-mount red's rubber stoppers while I was hitting the blue/yellow since that seemed to stabilize it somewhat. But once again, the double-hit problem remained.

I'm kinda getting short of ideas here. I have one more solderless kit left to try, but I feel like I must be doing something fundamentally wrong that's causing me to burn through them, so I don't want to just attach another one only to find it dead again 2 weeks later. The only thought I have left is that maybe the "wobble" in red's rubber causes the connectors going to the sensor to slowly come loose over time. One thing I notice is that in the original assembly, at the spot where the wires come off the sensor, they're secured to the back of the pad via a pea-sized blob of hardened plastic paste. Obviously I didn't have any of that paste to apply when I was attaching the 1st or 2nd solderless kit, so maybe it places a more important role than I thought. That's kind of what I was getting at when I tried taping down the wires to the back of the pad in my most recent attempt. But if the damage was already done to that particular sensor kit, I can see why it wouldn't have made any kind of difference.

So, yeah, that's the best idea I've got at the moment: Apply my last new solderless kit, taking care to tape it down to the back of the pad from the start. Good idea? Bad idea? Anyone have any other ideas? Yet another idea I have is to wait for Rock Band 3 to come out in hopes that maybe they've got a more robust drum kit design. But I suppose it would be heresy on this forum to talk of switching brands.

[SteveAdmin]

Hi Punchme

Thanks for posting on the forum.

And to answer your last question first yes it would be hearsay to even suggest buying rock band drums, they are in my opinion too loud to be played in the house.

I should also take this time to point out that if you have an issue with our solderless drum repair kit and you are good enough to let us know about it we will happily replace any faulty item you have from us free of charge so don't worry about burning through sensors we will make sure you have some!

The principles that the drum work on is very simple, the sensors when hit send a small signal down to the circuit board and the circuit board then tells the game which pad has been hit and how hard. There already three components in this chain: the sensor, the circuit board and the control unit which sends information to the game, it would seem from your posts do you have tried changing the sensor and after this many times you must now be quite adept at it to let us assume that the sensor is not at fault. If you are getting the blue and yellow pads responding when you hit the red pad then the issue is either that the blue and yellow pad are too sensitive or it could be the sensors in these pads are coming loose. Another possibility is that the circuit board itself is fried!

We will be happy to help you out with more parts should need them if you'd like to send us an e-mail (either p.m. through the site at via the contact us link on the webpage) then we will see if we can put this problem to bed and let the rest of the community know what was up.

Good luck Steve