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.

Triggera Krigg kick drum trigger front

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.

Triggera Krigg kick drum trigger side

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.

Triggera Krigg kick drum trigger side 2

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.

Kick drum pedals with noise isolation

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.