I have a pair of the Triggera Krigg v3 kick pedal triggers and they have helped me to eliminate the vibration and floor noise I used to get with my kick drum pedals on my electronic drum kit.
These triggers have a pretty simple design, they install easily and they work great. Here are a few of my thoughts about them.
The Build Quality
The first thing I noticed when I un-boxed these triggers is that they have a very heavy duty metal frame. I didn’t worry at all about putting too much stress on the frame when I was installing them on my kick drum pedals. I was able to tighten down my drum clamps as tight as I wanted on these things.
The rubber pad that the kick pedal “kicks” down on also feels really solid, and has a hard rubber surface that doesn’t seem to be wearing out on me at all, even after months of use.
The nut that tightens down to hold the pad in place in the frame is pretty solid, and can be tightened pretty hard without having to worry about it stripping down at all. The plastic knob on the nut is about the only thing that feels like it could break, and it doesn’t receive enough stress from anything to even worry about that.
Overall, the quality of the Krigg triggers is awesome, and I’m not worried about them holding up to constant use over time.
Ease of Setup
It always sucks to have to take the time to reconfigure or recalibrate any new additions to an electronic drum kit, or any kit for that matter. Questions that came to my mind when I was ready to install the Krigg triggers were:
- Will these install easily on my pedals?
- Will I have to adjust the spring sensitivity, height or any other variables of my pedals?
- Can I leave the beaters on my pedals?
- Will these triggers play nice with my drum sound module, in my case an Alesis DM-10?
Luckily, these question all had favorable answers, and I was able to set up these triggers in less than a half hour. After the first setup and playing on them for while, I made some small adjustments, and then haven’t really touched them since.
I found them easy to install on my pedals. I use an Axis AL-2 double pedal so I needed to setup two of these triggers, one under each pedal.
I clamped the pedal down on the Krigg triggers metal frame and tightened enough to hold in place while I evaluated the pedal height and tested the pedal range. I adjusted the trigger pad to a height that allowed for about the same pedal range as when I have beaters on the pedals and using them on a real kick drum, so it wouldn’t be wildly different in feel when I take my pedals off my electronic kit and use them on an acoustic kit, which I do when playing live.
I was generally able to keep the same spring tensions and pedal heights as I was using when I had the beaters on the pedals and was using a kick pad, which was good.
Once everything felt like it was positioned about right I fully tightened the pedal clamps down on the trigger frame to hold them in place and tightened the nuts pretty hard on the trigger pads. I was able to crank it all pretty tight. I don’t like when things slip around during heavy use, and I didn’t run into that problem after tightening everything up which made me happy.
Then I had to plug them into my sound module. Having two of the triggers, and only one kick drum input on the DM10 module, I was going to need to use a splitter or something to get two inputs into one. This was pretty easy. I just took a 6 foot dual 1/4″ to single 1/4″ audio cable and pulled the dual ends apart to split the cable down the middle for about half of its length. Then I plugged the left/right parts of the split end into the triggers, and the single end into the module, and it worked. Each trigger, when hit, was triggering the kick drum sound. Easy enough.
I had to tweak some settings on my sound module to increase the sensitivity of the kick sound in the module with the trigger pads, and that was it.
After everything was working, I removed the beater heads from the pedals. I only put them on now when I’m using the pedals on an acoustic kit. Some people leave the beaters on due to how it can affect the feel and momentum of a pedal, but I didn’t really feel like it was any different for me with or without them. That was just my personal preference.
Overall, setup was pretty easy, no instructions were needed.
Playability
At first it was kind of hard for me to get used to the fact that I was kicking down on triggers rather than kicking a beater onto a drum head, but it was mostly mind games from the visual look of the whole setup. The feel isn’t much different for me and my style of playing. I’m able to play just as expressively as I was before. I wasn’t disappointed at all in how the triggers affected playability, and I’m happy with how they feel under my feet.
Noise
The main reason I bought these triggers was to eliminate noise issues with my electronic drum kit. I live in an apartment with hardwood floors and the neighbors below could easily hear my kick drum beaters hitting the head on my electronic drum kit.
Using the triggers along with the Roland NE-10 Noise Eater Isolation Pads, I’ve eliminated all the noise and vibration that was going into the floor from my kick drums on my electronic kit.
Purchasing
The only place I found to buy them so far is to buy them directly from the Triggera website. They get shipped from Serbia, and I had them shipped to the Midwest USA. They got through customs fine, were packaged well, and I didn’t experience any issues with the product getting damaged during shipping. I don’t remember for sure, but I believe it took me about 1-2 weeks to get them from the day I ordered, which is about what I expected considering where they were being shipped from. Customer service was quick to provide me with order status and a tracking number when I asked.
Conclusion
Here’s the part where I have to make a confession. I have never used any other types of kick pedal triggers, other than hitting drum pads with the kick beaters. So I can’t really compare the Triggera Krigg triggers to any other triggers. However, for the price I paid (about $60 each, $120 for two) I’m very happy with what I got.
These triggers are built well, work great, get the job done and don’t get in the way or make you constantly fiddle with them. This was a purchase I’ll never regret, and haven’t after almost a year of use.
I can’t wait to get mine thanks for the post!!!
Just waiting for a tracking# and a ETA.. Can’t wait to get mine,Thx for your feedback
Thanks for putting this website together. I need similar solutions and this has helped a lot.
Would this work on an Iron Cobra pedal?
Pretty sure it would, but don’t quote me 100%. I used to have an Iron Cobra double pedal and from what I remember it had a design that would work fine with these triggers. I would recommend taking a look at the front part of the pedal that clamps onto the kick drum and see if it looks like it leaves enough room for the trigger pads under the pedal boards. Looking at photos of the Iron Cobra’s it looks like it would work.
I was going to order one yesterday, until I saw they charged 33 euros for shipping.
I don’t care where it’s shipped from. That much money to ship a small, solidly built metal component to southern California (not some out-of-the-way timbuktoo) is insane!
When I ordered mine it costs 18 euros for shipping, that was for a pair of the triggers. I took at look at their shipping info on their site and went through their order form out of curiosity just now, after seeing your comment, and it’s only quoting me 18 euros for shipping to the Midwest. When I put in a California address I also get 18 euros quoted for shipping.
Thanks a lot. I was in doubt if i’ll buy this trigger, but you said everything that i’d like to know about this device. Hugs from Brazil.
I currently have this weird set with a 10″ Onhead trigger mounted to a circle board in a real kick drum, and that trigger wasn’t designed for kick drum use so I’m looking for a good alternative.
Have you ever had a loud guitar or bass cabinet near this trigger? I’m curious to know if it is affected by vibrations from the floor or cabinets. I have some trick pedals that have a spring-loaded mechanism to lock the pedal to the drum hoop, which is not like most drum pedals are locked to the hoop. I was thinking of getting this or the Bix beater triggers which from what I could tell by the video I saw on Youtube that if you hit lightly with the Bix they do light hits, which gives them a large variation in range. If you hit lightly with the Triggera will it send a low velocity midi messages?
I haven’t noticed that the Triggera sends low velocity hits, but I think it has more to do with the sensitivity settings on my drum module than anything else. If I have sensitivity set to be really sensitive, it seems to pick up even light taps, but I can set the sensitivity to be more deadened and it doesn’t pick up on vibrations from other stuff in the room. Velocity also seems to be tied more to my module than the triggers, I can set velocity settings to anything in my module and these triggers react as expected.
Hi Luke, do you have any experience with the durability/wear of the Axis bearings on the linkage Strap that hits the rubber surface? I want to buy those Triggers for my Axis Pedals, but i’m afraid that it could damage the bearing over time because of the impact and vibrations to the linkage Strap (Axis calls it the “Ball Bearing Linkage Strap in their manual). Thanks! Greetings from Germany.
I use Axis pedals too, and the rubber surface held up to constant beatings – never really wore down at all during playing but looks slightly scuffed. I would think that if it did cause issues in your case, you could experiment with putting some sort of thin rubber strip or something over anything that has a rough edge on the pedal itself, as long as it doesn’t affect the feel of playing.