Rig Rundown : Pirates of Penzance

My Rig for Pirates was pretty simple (see picture below). The two toms did overtime as snare and timpani with the cymbal triggers serving up triangle and crash cymbal sounds. The BT-1 trigger was a nice addition to deliver the bass drum without having to deal with a foot pedal, but still allowing me to deliver simultaneous bass drum and crash hits.

It was my first time using the Roland BT-1 “Bar” trigger and I have to say it worked very well. I was able to get a range of dynamics and the small footprint was ideal for this show. There is some setup required on the TD-20 :
be sure to select the PAD-1 trigger type and set the RIM patch or it will bounce between the head/rim trigger sounds.

I also had to disable the rim trigger on the PD-100 it was mounted to so I didn’t get timpani sounds during the aggressive “Cat Like Tread” sequence.

I found this to be more reliable than the cross-talk groups and this was OK since I didn’t require rim sounds on the PD-100 for this gig.

Update: see my Rig Rundown for Legally Blonde for some notes on using the BT-1 with the TD-30.

The “Hand Cymbal” patch combined with the CY-13 gave a bunch of nice options including full on crashes using on the bow, quick chokes when pinching the edge and short crashes by using the edge trigger.

One downside of the TD-20 Timpani samples is that they have a hard attack, making rolls sound very percussive (or, “like a machine gun” according to our musical director). I had to do some tweaking to get these just right.

Finally, I had some trial and error getting the right dual tom stand for the V-Drums. The V-Drums require a smaller than standard L-Rod and the first stand I purchased didn’t work out. The Gibraltar 7700Q has removable ball arms and accept the SC-LBM replacement rods which have a 10.5mm diameter which works perfectly with the V-Drum mount.

Name	Type	Usage	TD-20 Patch(es)
Bar 1	BT-1	Bass Drum	#453 – Concert BD
Tom 1	PD-105	Snare Drum Hi Timpani	#470 – Concert Snare #451 – Timpani C
Tom 2	PD-125	Low Timpani	#452 – Timpani G
Cym 1	CY-8	Triangle	#457 – Triangle
Cym 2	CY-12	Crash Cymbal	#455 – HandCymbal