I’m using it with a TD-12 and I would say that I think it’s more a question of “differently” than “better”.
What I specifically like with the Hart is that even though there’s the rubber strip (which you can remove), the are made of metal instead of rubber.
Just feels more natural to me. I think you need to tweak things a bit more inside your TD-12/TD-20 than you would with the VH-12 (or VH-11), that’s my personal experience.
Ever since watching NirZ’s original demo video, I’ve been wanting that exact Hart and S2.0 setup. A few grand later, I’ve got the Hart Pro 6.4, a TD-12, and S2.0. But, for the life of me I can’t get the Hart hihat to act as good as it does on the video… Is that a limitation of the TD-12?
Essentially, I followed the guides I could find and I get a beautiful range and dynamic, but no way to get a closed or closed tip articulation. So, if I close the pedal, I get a 1/4 closed sound. I tried mapping the closed and closed tip articulations but it seems to not work right at all. Do you have any advice for me? I seem to be using your exact set up… What am I doing wrong? Any chance you could share your TD-12 settings for yout hihat as a starting point to see if I’m way off? Or maybe even tell me if you told your TD-12 that it was a VH-11 or a VH-12? I’d really appreciate the help.
You have got to tell the TD-12 that it’s a VH-12 and adjust the offset a bit.
I’ve had to work a bit with several settings in the TD-12 but this may be down to playing style.
Do you get better results when using Toontrack solo as your host and choose ‘E-drums’ as MIDI Controller and tick ‘CC Offset’?
Thanks for the quick replies!
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Here’s what I’ve done so far, just in case this background helps. I initially had my TD-12 set up so my hihat was a VH-12. I noticed from watching a graph of the signal that the range of pedal motion that actually changed signal was tiny. So, I could set my offset so that when I closed my pedal it would give a tight sound perfect and open would give a fully open sound. But it was only using a tiny fraction of the pedals motion, such that I couldn’t ever get a consistent 1/4 or 1/2 open, it’s just rapidly bypass that and go out of range and read open. So I made due by setting my offset so that if a song needed a steady 1/4 open sound my minimum signal would be that. But if there was a song that needed a hihat riding beat, and then a closed hihat beat, I was kinda out of luck haha. 😉
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When you use your hart pedal as a VH-12 do you find the pedal motion range that sends a valid signal is very small, John? Or is it possible that I have a less sensitive pedal? Do you use the hihat control adapter that Hart sends with their pedals?
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Anyway, one day I accidentally set the hart hihat to be recognized as a VH-11 in the TD-12. Now, when I move the pedal, it gives a near perfect range in that every minuscule movement of the pedal from full down to full up is sending a useable CC value. The only downside is that it’s lowest signal it sends triggers a loosely closed hihat sound. In a perfect world, I could just use an offset in that setting to lower it about 20% and it would be exactly right. But with a VH-11 setting there is no offset that I can find. I’ve previously used the settings nirzfan suggested and that’s when I started to notice the improved dynamics of that hart pedal, but it still won’t let me get a closed sound.
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So what’s where I am, with it set as a VH-12, I can get basically open or closed sounds with no useable mid range during live play.  With a VH-11 setting, I can get great dynamics for everything from 1/4 open to full open but can’t seem to offset it to have my pedal send a CC value low enough to register as closed.Â
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I’ll try using it in Solo with e-drums, but looking at the graph on my TD-12, I know it won’t send a control signal low enough for S2.0 to trigger a clsoed hihat sound. The lowest setting is just at the indicator line in the hihat tab of my TD-12. Is there a way in S2.0 to tweak the hihat control range? Like tell it that instead of a 0-127 range it has to use a ~20-127 range and to linearly interpolate from there? That would 100% solve my problem if there’s a way to tweak what CC notes trigger what hihat sound range.
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Thanks again guys, and sorry for the wall of text. I just know there’s gotta be some way to make it work because the dynamics in the NirZ demos were flawless. 🙂
Instrument pane > select hats from the instrument dropdown > select hatsctrl from the articulation dropdown > click on ‘edit articulation only > go to the vices and layers pane > reduce the hard velocity control until you can achieve tight or closed hats
Just a quickly comment that should help you improve the HH response and that is that you have it the wrong way around: low CC values correspond to open sounds so as stated by gdaddy this is indeed the hard setting that needs to come down and not the soft setting that needs to be raised if you are looking at controlling the closed threshold.
I tried your suggestions and was able to get the hihat to register closed. Just had to reduce the hard setting to about 100 and I’m able to get a closed sound. One last quick question, is there any way to further tweak a parameter to get tight closed sounds? Or is that just a limitation of using it in VH-11 mode? I was able to do it in VH-12 mode but found that the range of pedal motion that affected the pedal CC was too small.
Should I be able to fiddle with the hard velocity to allow my pedal to trigger a tight closed sound? Or is that done somewhere else?
yes, same principle – but you’ll have to get the hard velocity just right to get the Tight and Closed as desired and not trigger Tight even when you intend closed.
Remember also that Tight is only supposed to trigger when you apply some pressure on the pedal and while only you can really decide what is comfortable pressure, a casual action only ever so slightly more pronounced than the one you normally use for closing the hats is going to be more prone to trigger the wrong sound at times than it they are significantly differentiated.
… so, keep this in mind when setting your optimum value 🙂
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