Yamaha DTXpress Drum Pad Fix - PCY60 - Yamaha DTX fix

Yamaha DTXpress Drum Pad Fix

Recently, one of my Yamaha drum triggers / pads got screwed up and it took me a little while to figure it out.  Apparently, just plugging and unplugging these or having a snag in one of the mono cables will cause this problem with the mono jack solder joints and cause all kinds of weird problems.  In my case, the pad would (barely) be triggered with a soft drum stick hit.  

When I touched the little mono cable box underneath it, it just went nuts like it was being triggered repeatedly without any input and in a very fast sequence.  I checked the other pads and none of them exhibited the same problem.  

 

The jack itself is inside of this rubber "housing" which has two phillips screws, and a place to inserta small phillips screwdriver for sensitivity adjustment. 

 This is what the PCB looks like with the housing off. Below the PCB is a very simple (and cheap) Piezo electric pickup.  What we are focused on here is the jack itself...

Observe the underside of the PCB, and make sure the jack has not worked its way loose

from the PCB, paying attention to the four large solder joins.  On mine, the first two

solder joints closest to the jack tip were totally loose and needed to be re-soldered

A close up of the two connections that needed attention on my unit:

I believe this problem is attributed to the design of the box, and the amount of pressure that is put on the jack itself with the right angle mono jacks.  The outside housing should have been designed not to be rubber / or flexible around the jack tip area, which allows the jack to move inside of the housing in a downward direction over time, causing it to break loose from it's PCB solder joints.