A few weeks ago (and a few posts ago!) I bought an Alesis ControlPad. For the price, this is a great little device, and works really well – WHEN IT WORKS!
The first one I had had an issue with one of the pads, in that it was sending out random rubbish when I hit it, so was triggering all sorts of things. I swapped it out today for another one, and when I got it home, I plugged it in and tried each pad individually. All worked fine – with no issues! Hurrah! Good yes?
No!
When I started actually playing something with both sticks, I found this one had a different problem…! When more than one pad was triggered at one time, they would invariably not both fire. Only the one was ending up being input. I checked this by recording me simultaneously hitting the hi-hat and snare over and over. This showed up that about one in five times, the snare wouldn’t fire. This would happen no matter what I played together – one of the pads wouldn’t fire intermittently. This was incredibly frustrating, and after a 70 mile round-trip to get the replacement, I’ve had enough. This wasn’t happening even this morning with the last unit I had, even though one of the pads was knackered.
Unfortunately, its reduced this great device to being totally useless, and I’m not prepared to go through the rigmarole of chancing another unit. Alesis have got to get their quality control sorted This has left me extremely disappointed, and unlikely to chance one of their controllers again.
In short – My experience hasn’t been favourable. You may get a good one, but I’m afraid that after two dodgy units, I’m going to be waiting for Alesis to sort out the QC issues before diving in again. Its a shame, because I really like this unit.
DON’T BUY THIS DEVICE! I have the same problem as everyone else with dropped notes when two pads are hit at the same time. Will return unit.
I just got off the phone with tech support who told me that this problem happens because of the normal operation of the controlpad. The controlpad cancels out the weaker signal when two pads are hit at the same time to avoid cross talk from other pads so you have to adjust the sensitivity and threshold to get it to work right. I was told to fix this problem, turn the sensitivity down low and turn the threshold up high. Then gradually increase the sensitivity while decreasing the threshold until the pad works.
This fix seems tedious but hopefully it works because I don’t feel like paying any more money to get something else which will probably cost a few hundred more dollars.
It seems pretty stupid that they just don’t send these things out already calibrated or write about this adjustment in the manual or put it on there website somewhere that their customers can find easily when they inevitably have this problem.
I’ll let you guys know if this works.
Same issue with the double hits not working here…
I also had the same question as a couple of posts up.. what about the performance pad? Does it have the same issue? The sheer practical-ness (if that is even a word) of having a small pad for midi drumming that is under 400 bucks might be worth it if the performance pad doesnt have any of the issues the control pad does. Anyone have any info on someone who has or used the performance pad?
Ok, I have a slightly different problem with my Control pad, I want to be able to trigger long synth sounds out of Logic Express but every sound I dial up only makes a super short sound. How do I change this??
Also, to stop the sounds from playing too long I have set up one pad to be all notes off (Midi note 123) but this doesnt work, it only triggers a super high ‘bleep.’ Im sure it can do this; it says in the manual it can but Im having nooooo luck! HELP SOMEONE PLEASE!!!!
Just bought one…even after reading all these posts:D No drop out what so ever with roland kd-8 kick and dual pedals connected to trigger input. Using cubase sx3, win xp pro, addictive drums, bfd2 and sound card midi controller. Works perfectly after a month now…my friend’s control pad also works perfectly and he has had it for some months now. I see lots of complaints but with what OS and audio software, connection are you people having these issues? Even the control pad I tried out at the store with a kick hooked up did not experience any loss or random triggering when hitting 2+ pads. Again win xp pro, cubase, midi connection setup on test machine. I like this thing and I beat the holy crap out of it daily when recording…no save button no fuss and it always works! Dont know about the usb connection though…I havent tried it and just use it for power so i cant comment on the emulation that it does. I prefer midi thru.
I have started to experience missing snare hits lately, mostly after double kicktriggers and hihatpedaltriggers. Could the missing noteproblem be solved by connecting the kicktriggerpedal to another mididevice (I have a Behringer UMX keyboard for example)
I have just bought the Alesis Control pad…I had problems with some if the triggers not working. I took it back and exchanged it in the store….In return the replacement unit had one pad that would only work sometimes. But I got adventurous and took it apart. It turns out there are little circle sensors glued to the underside of the rubber pads. The sensor is supposed to be suspended from the pad. (Take it apart and you’ll see what I mean!) The reason they don’t fire is because if you look at the troublesome pad it will probably be hooked and not suspended from the pad or there could be a lose cable. If you are having problems take it apart and see if any of this will fix your issues. After I done this it works 100% better!
I ended up plugging the unit up and touching the sensors, if they don’t respond like crazy when you touch them(while suspended) then you probably have a bad sensor.
Interesting. Thing is, you shouldn’t have to open up and therefore void the warranty of a brand new piece of kit. This issue has been well known for a while now, and so should have been sorted by now surely?
Well the good thing is if you look under and around all screws or even on the sides there are no security stickers of any sort. Not sure how they could tell if you been into the unit. But either way, this fix was successful for me.
I have the control pad since November, I ordered one, got it from UPS/Fedex, whatever it was and the thing was broken, the top left pad was twisted 75%, so after much hassle, I got another one back like 5 weeks later, they kept screwing up getting it to me. hahaha Anyways, I’m not having trouble with notes dropping, but I am having trouble with two pads cross-talking, the very thing Alesis proposes is supposed to be not happening and thats why you guys have YOUR problem. I also have a problem with it not being recognized on my Pro Tools PC, which is annoying the s*it out of me right now. I don’t care if something doesn’t ‘NEED’ drivers, they should still have written some just in case. M-AUDIO does. ALESIS needs to get their head out of their ass.
Oh yeah, btw, neither time did it include BFD LITE either. haha I didn’t initially care either time, because I have BFD 2.0, but now that I and others have had so much shit trouble with it, it’s really annoying. I will never buy anything from Alesis again, which sucks for them since I’m an electronic instrument junkie. It would have been worth waiting the 5 months and I would have had the money to buy a small full electronic kit, an SPD-20, etc.
I recently bought one off e-bay second hand, and so far I’m very pleased with it. You really do have to tweak the settings to suit your playing style, but once done I can’t fault this bit of kit. Works flawlessly with Reason.
“Sly says:
17 February, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I just got off the phone with tech support who told me that this problem happens because of the normal operation of the controlpad. The controlpad cancels out the weaker signal when two pads are hit at the same time to avoid cross talk from other pads so you have to adjust the sensitivity and threshold to get it to work right. I was told to fix this problem, turn the sensitivity down low and turn the threshold up high. Then gradually increase the sensitivity while decreasing the threshold until the pad works.”
THANKS FOR THAT ADVICE!!! THAT TOTALLY CLEARED IT ALL UP. I TOO HAD THIS PROBLEM OF TWO PADS NOT SOUNDING AT THE SAME TIME AND I TWEAKED IT AS RECOMMENDED UP ABOVE THERE AND IT TOTALLY FIXED IT. MAN, THE INTERNET KICKS ASS.
actually… never mind. this thing is still acting goofy.
im trying to use my bass drum trigger with this thing, and im hitting my bass drum trigger and one of the pads at the same time, and too often the pad won’t sound off. i even tried tweaking the stupid sensitivity and the threshold on both, and its still not working right…
IM GOING TO GET THE ROLAND ONE INSTEAD.
if it works way way way better, i’ll be sure to post that here so you all can know.
maybe someone at alesis should read this thread and make those guys get their act together.
im sorry, but after that got bought out by the same people who own all the other electronics music gear companies who all suck at making quality anything… there’s nothing new thats good anymore unless its a company that hasn’t sold out to the Chinese manufacturing machine.
Hi, mine was also broken. One pad was always triggering even though it was not hit. I disassembled the unit and saw the sensor was off from the suspicious pad bottom. I pushed back the sensor on the glue. Now it works again.
Hi – Im thinking about picking one of these up and found your Youtube video. There is a nice hi hat groove at 4.55mins …is that with BFD 2? Can you use 1 pad for all the variants of closed-loose hi hat? The library Im using has closed hi hat, loose hi hat and open on seperate MIDI notes…ideally I’d like to have closed, and open…or even – use a hi hat pedal and have the whole hi hat on one pad, using the pedal to control along with velocity…is this possible? Any ideas? Thanks-Im trying to get good hi hat grooves in my DAW…
I had a trigger not working in mine and here’s what fixed it. My symptoms were the pad would trigger two pads at once but only 50% of the volume or less. When looking at midi note data on the pad it would make a transition between two notes. So I opened up and found the sensor soldier connection wasn’t working.
Take out the screws, there’s about 5 rows of 5, all the same size except for the last two rows at the power intake.
Carefully lift the top QUARTER WAY, not flat, rest it about 90 degrees vertical. You don’t need more room than that. Look for any wires not soldiered to the Piezo sensors.
If you have a wire that’s not soldiered (and the other is then soldier that one. If you have two remember the black wire goes on the metal ring outside the sensor and the colored wire goes to the center soldier dot.
As many have said these often have the pads falling out or the wire coming loose. I’m debating putting some padding / fabric in there to keep slight pressure on the pad sensors should they come unglued so you don’t lose functionality when playing live or tracking if the pad comes loose. if I do this I’d also have to run the wires inside a conduit to ensure that they’re not squished against the frame and innards, however I’m sure this is what ALesis should have done from day one.
I’m happy now.
tone is delay
A few weeks ago (and a few posts ago!) I bought an Alesis ControlPad. For the price, this is a great little device, and works really well
some of the posts, including the op, just flat out amaze me.
The cross-talk/sensitivity tweaking is normal and necessary on ALL electronic drums sets/pads. Understand? ALL OF THEM. Do you seriously expect anything like this to work out of the box without tweaking? If you know what you are doing, considered this, tweaked appropriately and still have cross-talk problems, fine, post away. Otherwise, your outright retardation is too much.
Not too sure of your choice of words – I think ‘outright retardation’ is a little strong. The original post is now almost four years old, and I’ve actually tried another one of these (which I got cheap) since then, as I’ve had to downsize my setup due to moving into a smaller place. I tweaked and tweaked until I could tweak no more, and never got a satisfactory performance out of it. I’ve used other units before and after, and never had the trouble I did with this one. Maybe its my playing style – who knows!
Whist your comment that units such as this need tweaking to work at their best, I disagree with you in that you should expect some degree of reasonable performance out of the box. Yes, cross-talk is definitely an issue on lots of units, but the degree of tweaking needed on this unit means that it may not even be suitable for everyone’s playing style. Also, the reports of QC problems with the units (e.g. sensors not being attached inside, wires not being soldered/breaking away), aren’t exactly encouraging.
In the end, if you can get good performance out of one of these, then good luck to you! I just never did myself.
Our artist Emma Heartbeat has some very good experiences with the Alesis Control Pad. Check the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcxCZRL3LfA Used with a PC and Cubase & Loopazoid.
Looks like that unit works a charm…!
To reiterate what I said – I like the Alesis Controlpad. I like it a lot. That’s the main reason why I even tried more than one of them in the first place. For the price, they offer great value. I just never managed to get a good result out of them. I am not saying others won’t.
Also, hopefully, the QC has improved in the several years side I used them, and hopefully now, people are getting the best out of them. I have nothing against Alesis – in fact, I own more than one other piece of Alesis kit, and they make generally very good, and reliable kit. I just never had much luck with these!
Sounds fine on the demo vid though, and that’s a great use for one of these units
Hi guys …. I have an Alesis P Pad which I bought not to use as a drum machine or drum kit but to control and play a sequence of notes from another sound module. Think Spirit of Radio by Rush and Neil Pearts parts in that then you will understand where Im coming from. The problem I have is I cant assign the pads to play the notes I require. The unit is general midi compatible and maps out in the same way as my Boss Dr Synth unit and various other sound modules I own. The pads have their own note numbers which I cant seem to change. I can successfully assign any onboard sound to any pad regardless of whether it is in its correct grouping or not. Also I can “tune” that sound 4 parts up and 3 parts down. But when I try to play say …. middle C4, I can get that not by octave shifting but no more notes will come in. I guess I need to be able to select the note numbers chromatically but Im having difficulty in doing this. I cannot use the onboard tuning to move these notes sharp or flat either …. it only works with the onboard sounds. Does anyone use one of these units in the way I am trying to and if so, how did you do it?? I am trying not to have to switch to a Roland SPDS padset because of the cost. Help needed ….. frustration isnt the word
Cheers .. TonyB