Coming along

Here are some pics of my first prototype drumitar during the building process. I have tried many different ways of building the piezo pads and it seems to me that the simpler the better. So my current design is using a small piezo transducer glued directly to a piece of thin fiberglass plate. Its the best I've found so far. The current Instrument has 12 input triggers, 6 simple on,off triggers and 6 velocity sensitive piezo triggers. The circuit board I'm using is based an arduino board designed and supplied as a kit from Tom Scarff. The circuit board converts the trigger input into midi , which is sent via cable to an sr16 drum machine. It is working well and I have been playing it with my band for the last few weeks. I will post some more up-to-date pics when I get a chance.

What is a Drumitar?

Many people have asked me what a drumitar is. This taken from  a Wiki article titled Drumitar. And refers to the  Original instrument created about 20 years ago by Futureman the percussionist with the Flecktones.

The Synthaxe Drumitar is an instrument created by Roy "Future Man" Wooten of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. The Drumitar comprises piezo elements mounted in a guitar shaped body, connected by cable to assorted MIDIdevices including samplers and drum machines. The instrument is one of a kind, and it was originally modified from aSynthAxe previously owned by jazz musician Lee Ritenour.

I have too many drums

I am thinking of selling my set of 3 conga drums to help finance my drumitar project. Let me know if you're interested, I'm in Maine USA