I bought an Alesis Nitro Ultimate as my first e-drum kit. Overall, I’m pretty happy with it, but the hi-hat controller has been really frustrating.

I’m using it together with a Millenium DHS-1018 Hi-Hat stand.

Main issues:

1. You need way too much constant pressure to keep the hi-hat closed. This is extremely annoying, because as soon as you relax your foot a little, you accidentally play open hi-hat sounds.
2. Half-open is basically unusable, because the usable range is far too small to hit reliably.

My first workaround was to preload the controller by mounting the Hi-Hat lower than recommended in the manual.

Problems with that:

* no half-open anymore, which was acceptable for me as a beginner
* no closing sound anymore, which was not acceptable

So I took the controller apart and tested it without the spring, without the housing, and by manually pressing the contact points.

And interestingly: without the spring, everything works much better.

The travel is probably still very short compared to better Hi-Hat systems, but now I get half-open and a closing sound.

The contacts are now touching by default, but in my test this did not seem to make any difference to the sound.

As an alternative, I guess replacing the spring with a softer one could also work. But for now, this is good enough for me.

  
Pictures:

1. dissassembled controller bottom with spring
2. controller on stand and touching contacts from the top
3. assembled with Hi Hit cymbal right at the top

  
**PS: Sorry for the AI translatet text. I am not an english native.**

Optimized Alesis Nitro Ultimate Hi Hat Controller (no costs)