The sensors are called piezo transducers, I believe.
The back end of the stick then, vertically, or a ball pein hammer. Think you can forget the roll however. 
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We’re talking about a range of things here (things that may need improvement or workaround), and at least one post has confused them. This is not necessarily complete but the list includes:
- What do the pads feel like ? Maybe they feel too hard ?
- What is the range of force that you have to apply. Is the minimum force to get a response (versus no strike registered at all) too high.
- Is there an adequate way to map a range of forces to a range of volumes (or other modulations)
Sorry if I’m just stating the obvious.
It makes sense in this situation that they are useless as they are now! and with a bit of travel could
be usable and retain some pressure sensitivity. You are better with a car with huge steering wheel,
that a car with no steering wheel at all!
Ah man. Ok. I was hoping not.
I hear you. total crap. sold that machine because of those useless pads. why bother putting them on there in the first place.
I seem to have been lucky, M:S track pads work fine for me. (not too different from my MPC1000 and Beatstep)
Manufacture date from the sticker on the bottom: 2019 wk09
Would be curious if the terrible pads were from earlier dates?
Yeah, I love my Model:Samples but the pads are not very playable for me. My solution was to build an Arduino-powered button box MIDI controller. I realize it’s not a simple solution, but the MIDI Fighter is really expensive and I think I would have to go through Ableton or something. Plus, I’ve always wanted an excuse to get an Arduino. It was a fun little project.
The bottom row is pads T1-T3 at 100 velocity. I mostly use these for kick, snare, and hats. The middle row is T4–T6, also at 100 velocity. I mostly use these for other samples. And the top row is T1–T3 again, but at 35 velocity so I have some options for expressiveness with the drums.
It actually works really well. I love playing it. The arcade buttons are a lot more fun to bang on than the M:S pads. It turns the M:S into a pretty great finger drumming platform.
(There’s no magic reason why I used 9 buttons instead of 12 or 16. I just had 9 buttons left over from another project.)
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I’ve just re-read all the advice and experimented and I’m still having a hard time with this. It’s very frustrating, particularly as I bought it (M:C in my case) because it looked like an all in one solution.
Now I’m coming to the conclusion that I need to buy drum pads to go with this device, which will at least double in size what previously looked like a very portable package.
And I have to hit pretty hard to do that because otherwise hits don’t get recorded at all.
Received it one week ego, thinking seriously of returning it. Hurts my fingers and definitely a sensitivity issue.
a solution is to use a keystep or push with it.
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Looks awesome. Might have saved me buying a launchkey mini mk3 for the pads.
It would be nice if Elektron could take this on board, validate it, and offer something that would not require lots of manual cutting of ‘duct’ tape. (It’s just insulating tape he uses, isn’t it ?)
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Also some tips on the pad menu on the comments.
Yes just regular tape, I did cut small rectangles and taped 4 per pad leaving a small hole in the middle
but a tiny hole is more than enough to let the pads led go out.
maybe a continuos strip up and another down with just a small gap between them is enough.
I]ve seen this method on other midi comptrollers on youtube also.
I don’t mind cutting tape; it’s the over 9000 screws that are putting me off doing this.
So just to confirm: it’s electrical tape, not duct tape? The latter is a lot thicker. I’m confused because both names are being used interchangeably here and in the video.
I advised a friend who was looking for a small drum machine to get an M: S (which I had not tried) having several Elektrons and loving these machines.
He came to my house not understanding how to adjust his pads.
Seriously who developed this?
It is absolutely unusable, except maybe with the drummer’s sticks, or after a finger weight training program.
Tested the various settings possible, researched the net …
I felt compelled to find a solution for him with a little midi drum controller.
No way to tell him to open the new machine or to do it myself.
So in summary you have to spend money to really use it and since I imagine that none of these little controllers have Midi outputs, he will have to use a pc and therefore forget his idea of playing quiet in his sofa . He tried the Digitakt, he is disgusted. It’s a shame since apart from that he greatly appreciates the sequencer and the rest that is offered for this machine.
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I totally get your frustration, but for me Launchkey mini mk3 (plus a stereo mini jack cable) was the solution. 16 pads + 2 octaves of keys.
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The Launchkey Mini mk3’s pads can only send MIDI to one channel at a time, though. Can’t play varied percussion on them… [edit: is possible with midi notes 0-5, see below]
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Guys thank you so I’m gonna make him / find a stand for both and get him either the Launchkey or another one with Midi and I’m going to dig into this stuff channel by pad.
I recently looked for a keyboard and it was hard to find one with the midi
(!!!, thank you Arturia and some others for thinking about it.),
I would not have bet to find pads with.
So I felt really bad for making him spend money on something that didn’t suit him.