Cymbal not working

[goodtimesbadtimes]

Hi,
I have a problem with my yellow cymbal.
It started only registering hits intermittently a few weeks ago.
I did a few fault finding things to try and narrow down the area that the problem is in.
Firstly I tried hitting the cymbal in different spots and with different degrees of strength.
This sort of narrowed it down to the central area.
Next I unplugged and pulled the yellow cymbal off, checked the wire, unscrewed the yellow cymbal and checked for any obvious faults on the PCB.
I then swapped the orange and yellow cymbals over.
The problem was still with the yellow cymbal.
I think the 3.5mm socket PCB has come loose somehow.
Any ideas and or solutions?

[SteveAdmin]

Hi Hugh

Well thats some good fault finding you have been through there! It is quite common for the 3.5mm socket on the pcb to become loose and loose its connection (often it is fine while the cymbal wire is in one position but it the cymbal wire moves a little bit it looses the connection) This is caused either by the vibration of enthusiastic drummers or by having moveed the cymbals while the wires are still connected. You can resolder the 3.5mm socket back onto the PCB if you believe this to be the case but it will not take much heat before the solder points on the board come away so only use a very low powered soldering iron (15W) and be quick about it!

Another thing you can do is to put a new 3.5 mm socket on the other side of the PCB (you can see they use the same PCB for left and right side cymbal) but this often involves drilling holes in the other side to put the solder pins through the board and then you will need to scratch the coating off the PCB around the holes you drill to reveal the copper surface under the green coating which you need to solder onto. This is a difficult job involving a tiny drill bit and some very delicate scratching (DJ Hero pun anyone?) but can be done. Otherwise you could look at hardwiring the cymbal by soldering the cable directly onto the sensor wires but this is even more difficult and you will not be able to take the cymabl off to move the drum kit anywhere.

The only other option is a new cymbal which you can get here

Hope this helps - tell us how you get on

[dejoni]

i've got the oposite of this situation
When i hit my orange cymbal,the game registrates the orangen like it has to, AND also the yellow one
so when i got a line of orange notes like the beginning of beautifull mourning from the gh metallica,i hit al my orange ones but the game also registrates the yellow ones.
What could be the problem?

[SteveAdmin]

Hi Dejoni, welcome to the forums

could you run through a few troubleshooting things for us first:
have you tried swapping the cymbals over to see if this has any effect
have you tried opening the drums up and swapping the cymbal cables over (you dont have to take them out just plug them into the circuit board the other way around, yellow into oranage and orange into yellow)
does the yellow cymbal activate if you hit anything else on the drumkit hard (or pick it up and shake it while playing) - this would indicate one of the sensor wires has come off

Get back to us with this and someone will help you!

[dejoni]

ok thanks for the information,i already tried to change the cymbals from place but i still got problems.
After the change,my yellow one doesn't work very well anymore and the orange still registrates orange AND yellow

grtz

[SteveAdmin]

Hi

If you have changed them over and one is still registereing hits that you did not do then you will need a new cymbal sensor, it sounds very much like one of the wires has come loose and is not making a proper contact onto the sensor and vibration in the kit is causing the bare end of the wire to hit the sensor and register a hit - in the same way that the game registers a hit if you unplug and plug the cymbal cable in. You can use the links below to get yourself a drum repair kit, what you will need to do with this is follow the instructions and replace the faulty cymbal sensor - you will need to be able to solder to do this, it is not heart surgery or anything but you will have to solder the wire onto the circuit board. Otherwise check out the parts store to see if we have got any cymbals in stock at the moment, it is a more expensive way of doing it but a bit easier just swap the old one for the new one!

Hope this helps

[dejoni]

ok,nothing worked but i've send a mail to activision, i still had garanty and now i received a completely new drum kit
nice ,isn't it ^^
thanks for the information you gave me

[SteveAdmin]

No problem! Well done on the new kit hope you enjoy playing it!

[dejoni]

that won't be a problem i think.

[TeH SiLveR NooB]

Hi,

My orange cymbal wire and cymbal pad itself doesn't work i don't think. I think this because my yellow one works fine but when i swap the cymbals over they both don't work... is it the orange wire and cymbal that's broken?