Adding an ION Expansion Cymbal kit to my Alesis DM8 USB drum set

The Alesis DM8 USB Kit kit comes with a hi-hat, 1 crash and a ride cymbal.  Coming from my acoustic kit where I had 5 or 6 crash cymbals, it was sort of limiting to have a single crash so I've been looking for the cheapest way to add another cymbal trigger to my kit.

You can get a single Alesis DMPad 12" Crash cymbal and then locate some mounting hardware, but in my case I decided to try an Ion Drum Rocker Cymbal Expansion kit (The IEDO7C ). ION is the company that makes the Drum Rocker kit for Rockband and Guitar Hero.  And it seems the same company makes both the Alesis cymbals and well as ION cymbals.  You can get an ION 12" crash complete with mounting hardware for about $50 on Amazon. Great deal!  The Alesis-brand mounting hardware alone would probably cost more than $50 plus you'd still have to buy the pad with is $50-60 by itself.

The DM8 module has two stereo 1/4" jacks on the back for expansion purposes. One is Perc1 and the other is Perc2.  (I think on the DM8 Pro Kit, one or two of these jacks might already be in use because of the triple-zone ride cymbal. Not sure.)  These inputs show up in the module as Prc1Hd/Prc1Rim and Prc2Hd/Prc2Rim.  Since each input is stereo, you can trigger two different sounds from each input for a total of 4 additional triggers.   If you had a dual-zone pad, you could connect it to one input using a stereo cable and trigger both the head and the rim.  If you had two single zone pads, you could connect those to the same input by using an "insert cable", which takes a 1/4" stereo TRS cable and splits it to two 1/4" mono cables.  In my case I just used a single 1/4" mono cable because the ION cymbal is a single zone.

Here is my latest Youtube video that covers the unboxing, mounting and module configuration...