Hi there, I was just thinking in the middle of a session how wonderful it would be to have a modded out Rytm that had MPC pads. Probably not the first guy who’s thought this… Is there anyone that knows anyone that’s had custom work done or know where to get custom work done?
Thanks!
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I think the issue is that the cost will exceed the benefit and it will be significantly less expensive for you to just purchase an MPC to use as a controller.
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Are the pads similar in size? Then it’s probably not a difficult mod. If not, you’ll have to cut the faceplate and diy a solution to fix the pads and all that stuff.
The digital side shouldn’t be that hard to fit into the Rytm. Maybe an additional MCU would be required to translate the MPC pads’ output for the Rytm’s OS, but that would be relatively easy I’d think.
Still, if the pads don’t fit, it’s a lot of work.
Edit, I overlooked something. It might be possible to fit the sensors into the Rytm, but the pads do not fit. In this case, you’d have to come up with a solution to either have custom pads made or a new faceplate. Cutting pads to size doesn’t seem it would be a good idea.
That might work, but we’d have to test it.
If you have time to research dimensions and specs of sensors and pads for both Rytm and MPC and you find an MPC model that looks like it would fit, there’s a chance it can be done.
MPC as controller is probably better and you can use both.
“possible” is doing some heavy lifting here.
If the person who makes your MPC buttons can mold some buttons or a button layer for your Rytm, great! If it wasnt well matched to space tolerances I could see more mechanical strain on the button switches.
There are not any current vendors that I am aware of, thus no prices that reflect scale of manufacturing.
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What about designing a new faceplate around MPC pads? Holes for the encoders, buttons, display like on the original and then a new section to fit MPC pads. Won’t be cheap, but might be the easiest route?
You’d have to match the switch arrangement/size, and any tolerance betwen pad and switch, at that point there’s no benefit from using the existing MPC design when you add in a machine shop .
Might as well have them develop a new mold with the materials they use for the MPC buttons.
Nothing you do over a weekend and I would just use an MPC as controller, but after a few prototypes (probably way too many) and probably a few weeks of messing around…you might have your Frankenrytm’s monster.
Even the cost of paying someone to figure out how to successfully cut the pad tops off of mpc fat pads and permanently adhere them to a rytm pad sheet in such a way that it will technically “work” will be excessively expensive, it’s not something which can be resolved for less than the cost of an MPC.
Making a custom mold for injection molding with good tooling can exceed $10,000 even if there were an existing process and the design work were done for free - not an option.
Cutting the pad tops off MPC fat pads and finding a way to successfully adhere and keep them permanently attatched to rytm pads would take a lot of labor and knowledge about the specific types of polymer because mismatched silicone / rubbers are hard to just glue together, it requires a chemical bond.
if the square part of the pads, not just the pad sheet but the actual pads individually, were not the same dimensions it would need a different faceplate.
Part of whatever calibration was done when developing the rytm had to be in some part working / engineering around factors like the actual pad weight and how it reacts with the contact sheet to activate the circuit connection (like how a tv remote has) or physical switch underneath, otherwise you’d get a lot of double triggering and issues like that, so even if you make it physically fit you would need to compensate for the mechanics of a different pad which might take some kind of programming knowledge and microcontroller which I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I haven’t even looked into what kind of mechanism the rytm uses but probably different from the way the mpc actually triggers the pads if I had to guess.
There are a thousand other considerations. There is no possibility to do this on the ghetto cheap, it will ruin a rytm and a sheet of mpc pads in the process.
The cost exceeds the benefit.
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I mean, just remove the Rytm from power, remove the front plate, and take a look at the button panel dimensions. If you had upgraded MPC pads you could compare them.
It’s not like a person could replace the amount of energy that went into casting custom improved buttons with scissors and glue, but it will give some perspective for why it’s not drop-in between different designed models.
Almost certainly yes. Most of the online PCB assembly services offer CNC machining and you can order faceplates made from PCB material, that’s why I suggested going that route. Easier to fit an MCU in (99% sure we’ll have to “translate” the MPC sensor output for the Rytm) and prototypes aren’t that expensive.
You can design the faceplate with their software or start in your CAD software and transfer that.
Again, I wouldn’t attempt to do that, I think it’ll be a lot of money and time for a probably not so great looking Frankenstein’s monster thing that might never even give you the MPC finger drumming experience. That’s the crux, I guess. Even if they could be fitted, it might be a different experience.
But I still think it might be possible. (Hint, I could be wrong.) Also I love my Rytm and would never do something like that.
It’s all theoretical energy here, but why would someone replace the Rytm switches if the issue was just padfeel/spring back from finger drumming?
You can change the faceplate sure but by the time you replace the switches and redesign them with a new daughterboard with a different spacing you’ve entered bored independently wealthy territory for a one-off.
I’ve thought about it a bit for my mki and moved on, and had to replace my pads for my early Model:Cycles /ModelSamples 
I will be doing some tests on Rytm MK2 in the future.
I’ll be moulding some softer pads as well as looking into the carbon sheet thickness and check whether a solution where all individual pad squares are isolated from each other rather than a single sheet of silicone and carbon for all 12 pads (these has proven to be a successful mod on other gear with poor responding pads).
I think we can improve things quite a bit, but the biggest bottleneck would be any firmware related threshold sensitivity or any cross triggering suppression implemented. That would be the biggest limitation imho.
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It wouldn’t help. The pads are actually extremely sensitive, it’s just that the software only registers a trig past a certain press-hardness threshold. This can be proven by pressing/holding a pad in Perf mode with a very light touch. Lots of reasons I can think for this, but a firmware patch could in theory solve the issue, it’s just a question of it being worth Elektron’s time as the solution might not be straightforward.
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Are you familiar with the story of Picasso and the napkin drawing?
Picasso was at a Paris market when a woman approached him and asked if he could do a quick sketch for her on a paper napkin. Picasso politely agreed and did a quick sketch on the napkin then handed it back and asked her for a million Francs.
The woman is shocked and says “How can you ask for so much? It only took you five minutes to draw this!”
Picasso says “No. It took me 40 years to draw this in 5 minutes”
You mention the biggest limitation in your opinion is firmware related threshold sensitivity or cross triggering suppression but from the perspective of OP to gain the expertise to do all of these things in a short amount of time is just not feasible.
Certainly the biggest limitation from the perspective of the original post is knowledge followed by money / resources. Maybe something that seems feasible to you would also be possible for others, but not without paying them for their time and most people with specialized knowledge and skills don’t work free or cheap.
If someone independently finds a way to improve the rytm pads then that would be great for a lot of people, but it wouldn’t be by retrofitting MPC pads into a mkII rytm.
I don’t want to give this person false hope. They are asking for the who’s and how’s, which means that they don’t have the knowledge or the ability to do this themselves and if you personally do start testing pad upgrades on rytm mkII, please keep track of all time spent on figuring things out via trial and repeated error and then all associated costs which lead you to a success so that we can see how much or little the value of time is worth.
The cost of purchasing any random mpc one+ or a similar akai device on the used market and making that a controller for rytm is the only reasonable solution if the op wants some workable way of using pads which are like that of an mpc.
Anything is possible with time, expense and knowledge, but without any of those 3 then expense will increase tenfold if not hundredfold. This is just the nature of life.
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Yeah I suspected that!
Then I’ll probably avoid wasting my time and efforts on it, I guess we are forced into using an external pad controller or an electronic drum kit if we want any kind of sensitivity/expressivity from the AR.
And yes @shigginpit you’re absolutely right, I appreciate you dedication on writing that down so clearly.
You know I like to mess with things, plan stuff, build, modify, test, repair, design etc. Which is cool but most of the times I tend to jump head first on silliest idea or curiosity without realising that it will take so much of my time away and often let me neglect other important things.
Maybe wasn’t your intention and I might have misinterpreted your post but it helped me not to fall in this rabbit hole, and for a moment made me conscious of the valuable time we all more or less have at our disposal.
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When the rytm 2 came out, a lot of them had incorrect data sensor sheet thickness which caused double and phantom triggering on the mutes. The tolerance is really tight in there, no room for error. It was life changing when they finally started acknowledging and fixing the issue— I would never mess with that stuff if not necessary personally, the headache was really not fun.
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Maybe I’m just going to mould a set of softer pads and that’s it, easy.
Not solving the sensitivity/expressivity issue but at least saving some fingers, as I guess you all already noticed that hitting the damn pad hurts as much as hitting the solid metal chassis!
In an ideal world, I’d want a way to replace them with buttons, with characteristically huge dead zones and aftertouch. But I have no idea if/how that would be accomplished. That would be more useful on an Elektron device, which reuses everything for multiple purposes so they have to be kind of generic.
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Havent read the whole thread but a core part of the Rytm’s interface is that the pads light up for different modes. Is there any MPC that has LED pads? Youd either have to give up that functionality which would make it way harder to use, or create some custom MPC pads that can integrate with elektrons lights somehow
Oh cool so you mean like 12 huge mechanical keyboard buttons with aftertouch right?
That’s actually not to difficult to pull off as it would just be a mechanical part, sort of a mechanical set of pads to replace the original ones…
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