Drop Clutch for Edrum Hi Hats
A "Drop Clutch" is a device for acoustic drums which allows the drummer to hit a lever to drop the top hi hat cymbal onto the bottom hi hat cymbal. Gravity holds the two cymbals together giving the drummer a partly open or "sizzle" hi hat sound. This is most useful when playing double bass with both feet, rather than simply playing the hi hats completely open. Unfortunately, drop clutches for acoustic hi hats don't work so well on most edrum hi hats.
Stand mounted hi hat controllers (Alesis Strike Pro, Roland VH10, Goedrum, and others) use a variable resistor in the controller to tell the module how open or closed the hi hats are. Using a drop clutch on these will generally produce a "less than fully open" hi hat sound, but the results aren't great. Vertical movement of the cymbal is important in these types of controllers, and striking a hi hat pad that is simply resting on the controller causes changes in pressure on the resistor, which can cause the module to constantly switch between closed, 1/4 open, 1/2 open, 3/4 open, etc. with each hit. A clutch with a built in spring like the Tama design may help to keep constant pressure on the controller and gain consistency, but I haven't tried it. There is also the issue of keeping the top hat from rotating while playing when using a traditional drop clutch. I have seen at least one marketed attempt to address this in roland world, but I haven't heard any reviews as to it's effectiveness.
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Pedal type hi hat controllers (Roland FD-8, Alesis DM10 Pedal, etc.) Also use a variable resistor to control how open or closed the hi hat is. The up-side of these controllers is that it eliminates variance in the hi hat position normally caused by hitting the hi hat cymbal, since the pad is completely disconnected from the controller. The down-side is that since the cymbal doesn't act directly on the controller, a normal drop clutch obviously won't have any effect on whether the hi hats sound open or closed.
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Since both of the above types of controllers use variable resistance to determine position, I decided to try using a potentiometer to control the resistance manually. This worked great, so I mounted the whole assembly in a stomp box with a footswitch that lets me choose between controlling the hi hats with the controller (hi hat stand), or setting the hi hats to a fixed position of my choosing. It is incredibly simple, works great, and is cheaper to make than the cost of most off-the-shelf drop clutches.
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Below are links to the parts needed to make this on Amazon. The only difference is that I used a 100k potentiometer and listed a 50k here (without a knob). Either should work. In addition to these items you will need a way to drill holes into the box, a soldering iron and solder, and wire.
The image above shows how this is wired.
The red wires on the jacks are connected to the "tips" and the black wires are connected to the "sleeves".
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The red wire on the potentiometer is connected to either the 1st or 3rd terminal, and the black wire is connected to the 2nd terminal.
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The switch (black box in center of photo) is an "A:B" switch, meaning that instead of "on" and "off", activating the switch alternately changes between 2 circuits. The top left and right connections are the red and black wires from the jack on the left. The bottom left and rignt connections are the red and black wires from the potentiometer. The middle left and right connections are the red and black wires to the jack on the right. Pressing the switch alternates between controlling the hi hat open position with the potentiometer, or with the controller plugged into the jack on the left.