Electronic Drum Kits

i recently moved across the country and had to leave my acoustic kit back at home. regardless, i'm living in a duplex now so an acoustic kit wouldn't be an option unless i soundproofed a room, which i don't really want to spend money doing.

i've played on the electronic kits at guitar center and they seem like a decent alternative. i really miss playing and it would be nice to record 'live drums' rather than programming for a change.

what do you guys think about them? any kits you would recommend or not recommend? do you think they are worth the $1000+ price tag? are they easily identifiable in recordings?

i'm thinking about the alesis dm10, as the heads look decent and it has the ability to load your own samples which is important to me. anyone had any experiences with it?

I've never had a digital kit of my own, but was looking around at different models a few months ago... the one I decided on (whenever I get the money again) is the alesis dm6, the cheaper model of the one you're looking at (dm6 = around $400). Looked like it could be hooked up to midi devices and have any sound assigned to each drum (or cymbal), much like what you said about the dm10.

I think you should get one and tell me what happens.

I had an Alesis DM5 for a while but didn't like it. Not a fan of the rubber pads!

The pads on Roland kits are much better, imo. If you can afford one with a mesh snare pad (or entirely mesh pads), you won't regret it!

Actually it looks like the DM10 has some equivalent of mesh pads anyway. Make sure you play one first, though!

yeah, I've pretty much only played Roland kits and the mesh pads have quite a nice feel. GC never has any alesis kits set up so I have no idea how the heads will feel.. but from what I've read, it's quite easy and inexpensive to replace the stock heads with mesh ones.

aside from the feel, what did you think of the sound, Modey?

Sound was pretty good! Apparently they're among the best drum brains out there. I think you can even assign different hits to different velocity levels. Very electronic though. It worked well with EZdrummer!

I'm sitting next to an Alesis DM10 right now - I'm no good at drums, but I can tell you that the Alesis brain (or the built-in kits at least) doesn't sound good and the whole thing just feels bad. The bass drum pedal and the drum heads are very loud, e.g. if you play with headphones you'll have to deal with their obnoxious 'tock' sound. You can actually hear it from one floor below. The rebound feeling is not really convincing either. I would say that you'll probably never want to use this drum set for anything but practise.

I remember checking out some expensive Roland kit with mesh heads once, which felt much better, was more quiet and had a more useful brain unit - but it was 5000 euros or something.

The Alesis kits, in my opinion, feel and sound horrendous. I have an upgraded Roland TD3 kit with an extra tom pad and a TD6 brain - it's great for practicing and jamming, etc. but I found recording wise it simply lacks something that I can get from acoustic kits. I guess it's a question of realism, etc.

But, if you're without a real kit and need to go electronic for whatever reason, go for the Roland kits. I can't really speak for Yamaha as I've never played them for that long, but they're somewhere in between Alesis and Roland in my opinion - I always found their pads too small

Huh. I liked the sounds on the DM5.. Then again, I never really used any of the acoustic sounds. The more industrial sounding kits were my preference!

I would guess that the sounds should not even really be a factor as it would be so trivial to plug it up to a laptop running battery or something.

  On 10/18/2012 at 10:02 PM, slightlydrybeans said:

I would guess that the sounds should not even really be a factor as it would be so trivial to plug it up to a laptop running battery or something.

It's not even that, the velocity sensing is pathetic. Single strokes at constant dynamic were giving me "ka ka k k KAH ka k KAH k k k KAH". Again, I guess this could be the multisampling per each drum sound but I think it may have been both the sensing and the multisamples.

I played on a friends kit that used Pintech heads and they were pretty nice. Very responsive. I've been thinking about selling my acoustic kit/mic kit/tascam f1884 as a bundle and hopefully affording a decent electronic kit. The hassle of setting eveyrthing up for recording after moving and breaking everything down is getting to troublesome for my back. I think besides the heads, the brain is the most important peice to get right.

The Roland V-drum ones are really really nice. I used to have a proper old one with solid rubber pads when I was a kid. Didn't get on with it though. Haven't tried the Alesis ones but a friend has a Roland and it's really nice. Make sure you give it a proper try out because they are expensive and if you don't like it you'll probably end up not playing it and just pining for your acoustic kit!

just my 2 cents on the matter, if you want to get something rubber pad based i wouldn't bother doing anything beyond a vintage octopad or drumkat. Something about a rubber pad 5+ piece drum kit does absolutely nothing for me, i find it cumbersome and totally not inspirational compared to an actual drum kit. Whereas with something more compact with rubber pads you can use it for hand drumming and sticking equally.

if you want something setup like a real drum kit i highly recommend getting some mesh-head triggers and forget rubber pads all together. It's the only way imo you can comfortably transition between real drums and virtual drum triggers. Once you actually play on a mesh-head you'll wonder how you were content with old school simmons-esque rubber pads for so long

i wouldn't rely on any fully formed out of the box vdrum kit to get you where you want. It's all dependent on how good the drum-brain is, some are worse than others. Things like the drumkat let you plug in your own pads of any design into the back (using a 1/4 cable).

thanks for all of the responses, i just pulled the trigger on the alesis dm10 studio after seeing it on amazon for $700. that will leave me with some money to put towards a bass pedal and some mesh heads if the mylars don't work out.

sexy

Very nice!

thinking of getting an electronic drum kit. maybe second hand? I'd be using it mainly for learning, at this point. not sure what the best kit would be for that but Vdrums seem to have a good rep. any recommendations for a learner?

I wanna get a feel for the placement and setup of an acoustic kit though. I'd want to eventually transition to the real thing. the Nord Pad seems too simple, no?

maybe it's not for you....

it will not teach you foot technique, but you can deffo learn to rhythm with it.. reason I posted it is cuz it sounds good.

imo, transitioning to a bigger kit is easy, you just use your upper arms more & move your torso a bit.

Thinking of getting a VDrums kit over here as well, but I'd avoid the cheaper range kits that come with rubber pads.

Ultimately, if you're a beginner, you may want to purchase isolated pads for BD, SD and HH (plus all the required hardware); then either get an external sound module (Roland or Clavia's Nord Drum), or get Roland's TMC-6 and send the MIDI signal to a laptop to trigger samples.

Speaking of this, have you seen the Aerodrums thing? I'm blown away

Oh my flam-paradiddle, they're already on sale on Amazon!!

haha and you guys are complaining about rubber pads not feeling real?

Yeah that looks cool but how do you do rolls etc without having an actual drum for the sticks to bounce on?