The Sample Mute Switch is a vital concept for every drummer that uses a snare drum trigger. A bold statement but true!
Trigger units often have threshold and sensitivity gauges that can be customised to suit your drumming but no matter how hard you try, you'll always need control if you want to avoid mistakes and drum professionally.
An easy way to describe the Sample Mute Switch, is a trigger kill switch. You have the power to play your snare as expressively as you want without the sample interfering. Then, with an easy pivot of your hi-hat foot, press the pedal with your heel and your snare drum trigger activates immediately. Now you can launch into the chorus with that beautifully rich sample helping you out.
Examples of when you don't want a sample firing:
- Tuning & part of sound check (get the acoustic snare sounding great before adding in the sample)
- Songs that don't require sample reinforcement
- Sections of songs that require a bold sample that cannot be heard at other times in the song i.e. chorus tambourine
Every drummer has moments when they want to confidently drum without risk of the snare sample firing. The stress of sample misfires in sensitive moments is a real thing 😱! The Sample Mute Switch is going to relive stress as you drum and help you achieve a professional sound. If you drum with a snare trigger then you will absolutely love this pedal, plus your band and engineer will be thanking you!
Take a song structure of A, B, A, B, where you use a snare sample for B but not for A. It takes exceptional control to play a fill out of section B and drop perfectly to the velocity required to remain under the threshold for section A. You shouldn't have to stress about this! The Sample Mute Switch allows you to simply switch your sample on for section B and off for section A! No more stress about hitting the snare exclusively under or over the threshold which means more brain power for groove and feel and good times! A personal example of snare sample misfires was when I was drumming on a tour years ago and I lay my stick down on the snare drum in a quiet moment in the set. The stick rolled on the drum and hit the rim of the snare causing the trigger to fire. The snare sample echoed through the speakers for everyone to hear, to my embarrassment 😳 (not to mention how unprofessional that was).
This pedal is designed to sit beside the heel of your Hi-Hat pedal, as pictured, allowing you easy access at any time with the simple pivot of your foot and the press of your heel. You don't need to take your toes off your hi-hat stand which means you have the ability to activate/deactivate even when you're playing closed hi-hat parts.
The Sample Mute Switch is powered with a regular 9v, 1.7 Amp power supply for pedals and is not included but available from Amazon and any music store or automobile store. Use a 1/4" lead plugging into the trigger unit and then into the 'in' arrow of the Sample Mute Switch, then a second 1/4" lead running out of the 'out' arrow and feeding into your drum machine's trigger input. Simple as that! Now you're in control of your trigger the way you always need to be.