Pads can be made in many shapes. Two shapes that got their own name are Tubes and Cymbals. A tube is a tubular shaped drumpad. Not designed to play drumrolls on it but useful for playing single hits. Like you play a cowbell, jamblock or crash cymbal.
The design I made in the 90's contained two parts. First of all a little PVC box (or better, one half of a box) which I also used as housing for triggers. The piezo is mounted in the cap of the housing. That cap can be shoved inside the tube and glued with PVC glue.
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The cap, with the piezo glued on it, is one end of the tube, the mounting is on the other side: with screw thread. To lead the cable of the tube close aside the drumrack, the connector is mounted near the end of the tubemounting. The tube can be covered with a rubber playing surface but you also can use the tube without rubber playing surface.
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This small tube design was about 10-12cm long and made of a PVC tube with pretty thick walls. Therefore the tube doesn't vibrates not too much after a hit. Which means when hitting the tube in the center, not much of the vibration will reach the piezo. In drum modules you can raise the sensitivity but when you want to play with a variety of dynamics you are better off choosing a tube with thinner walls, to get a stronger trigger signal.
Besides small PVC tubes there are also bigger PVC tubes and that results in getting different response. Below two pictures of a bigger tube design I made. Because the piezo has to be mounted on a flat base, I chose to combine half a tube with a flat piece of PVC.
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In principle a pad, and therefore also a tube, can have any shape you like, but the question is how much nuances you want to play on it. Do you want to have a perfect playable pad, a tube isn't the right shape. Then you have to make a pad with a rubber surface. However it can be very useful to make some tubes in addition to regular drumpads, because they are small. I always use regular drumpads in the center of my drumkit, but on both sides of my drumkit I place Tubes or Cymbals.
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