Re: newer e-drums, or old Roland
As an Alesis and Roland player, take it from me, the dm6's, dm7's and even dm8's I wouldn't even bother with. If you're looking at some thing that you can set up and play, have less hassles with, and also have the advantage of chokable cymbals, ride cymbal bell and cross-stick on the snare, without having to fiddle with a bunch of controls, go for the Roland td9's, or if you can, older ones like the td6's, td8's and so on. Yamaha's DTXpress's, particularly the DTXpress IV, are also worth looking at. If you're looking at the DTXplorer, note that the snare pad that comes with it usually is a single-zone trigger (meaning no cross-stick sound), but you can separately purchase a dual-zone trigger pad (I think that one's the HP65S?), and you'll find it will work perfectly wth the DTXplorer module with very little tweaking. Which brings me to the trials and errors with my Alesis DM5 set up.
See, when I first was looking for an electronic set up, I wanted something affordable (and this was at first a cheaper set up), but I was also looking at something where the module has more than 8-10 trigger outputs....so this was what I liked about the Alesis DM5...it has 12 trigger outputs, plus obviously the 13th one for the hi-hat pedal (foot controller). BUT what I was unaware of is that unlike Roland and Yamaha modules, the DM5 is a mono-triggering module....so even if you hooked up a dual-trigger snare or cymbal pad, you are only going to get one sound out of it. Also, the early production model DM5 kits came with a light drum rack with corner clamps that would slip, an extremely light hi-hat pedal, rubber mono-trigger cymbals that you couldn't choke or play the bell on, and you had essentially one of the rubber tom pads as your kick drum pad, which just felt plain awful (I used to gaff a couple of layers of cut-out drum silencer pad material to it to give that 'sinking into the bass drumhead' kind of feel, lol). So essentially they built an AU$500 around an AU$1000 module (at the time of purchase roughly more than two years ago), and whilst I like the module's sounds, the kit was just sucky, let's put it that way, lol.
So the first thing I had to think of was to replace the rubber cymbal pads, they just weren't cutting it for me. Bear in mind, I was purchasing this lot for two DM5 sets, my main one that I use and the second one for students. Here in Sydney, there are less than a handful of drum shops that deal with Alesis, so that did become a source of frustration somewhat. Finally, at one store, I was able to order 11 Alesis SURGE electronic cymbals (essentially three 'sets' of a hi-hat cymbal, crash and ride and two separate crashes), these are dual or multi-triggerable. Plus 11 sets of Power Beat cymbal boom arms and rack clamps for them. Total cost - well over AU$2500. However, whilst you could hook Alesis SURGE cymbals to any other module such as a Roland or Yamaha and get them to dual-trigger and choke, couldn't do so with the DM5 straight away. Nup. I learned then that in order to do that I'd have to order another Alesis device, the Alesis Trigger I/O. You connect that up to the DM5 with a MIDI cable, patch in the leads for the cymbals and other pads that you want to dual-trigger, and then after adjusting settings will you have what you want. Would you believe only one Sydney store was able to get two of those Alesis Trigger I/O's for me? And it takes Alesis two months to get it in to where I am? Aaarrgghh!!
Earlier version of one set up, where I replaced the old style cymbal pads with SURGE cymbals.
Okay, so that wasn't the end of the problems. Whilst I've been using these a lot in my teaching practice (and after having first replace all the corner clamps on the racks with sturdier Gibraltar ones....mind you the great thing is that these older racks are a lot lighter transport than the latter Alesis racks), what other problems were there? Well, remember the bass drum pad problem? After a while, they just seem to give out, and after one of my local drum shops stopped stocking Alesis parts, this was becoming a problem. So I decided I'd just have to see how Roland kick pads would work. They were doing ok (slight retriggering problems, but these were later rectified by the Trigger I/O units, thank heavens!). However I also needed to replace the hi-hat pedals as well as get some decent snare pads. So once again, more money was sunk in, eventually I got one Roland KD-85 kick pad, one Roland PDX-8 dual-trigger snare pad and one Roland FD8 hi-hat pedal for each kit. That was at least about another AU$1600 spent (in the meantime I had also spent AU$900 on a Roland SPD-20 Octopad that I added to my main set, and good thing I did, as I'll explain more.)
Alesis set with added kick,snare and hi-hat Roland triggers and Octopad.
So, there I am. Got the pads and the necessary lead connections, clamps etc. Think it's going to work alright? Well, yes and no. Yes, the kick pads worked on both sets, being mono-triggers, and the hi-hat pedal and sounds worked on the student's set, but the snare sounds sounded weak with both pads and the hi-hat wasn't even working when connected to the module of my own set! An even bigger aaarrggh!! So, whilst I was going to be waiting for a while until the Alesis I/O trigger units to arrive, what the hell was I gonna do? Well, the fortunate thing is that the Roland Octopad has dual triggering functions, plus it has trigger inputs for hi-hat and pedal, so I've the two snare pads hooked into that plus the hi-hat cymbal and pedal from my main set connected as well (I'll be patching the hi-hat and pedal from the main set into the Alesis I/O trigger unit a little later when I've the time.) So, up until the trigger I/O's arrived, I've had the two Alesis DM5 kits with most of the trigger leads patched into their respective modules, with the two Roland snare pads and one hi-hat assembly patched into the Roland Octopad. Incidentally, my main kit runs two Alesis DM5's as I've used up the 12 trigger inputs and needed a few more to run one crash trigger which I have china sounds on, one extra tom pad that has splash sounds, my secondary hi-hat and pedal on the right, my second ride on my left, and the bell sounds for both rides on my set plus the bell for the ride on the student set.
Finally! Everything that I need to make this electronic drumkit function like a real drumset!
It's been a long trip with this, but I think at least now I have everything I need, plus it was just a good experience going through manuals, other's advice, and just sheer experimenting and trial and error.
Last edited by Drumbledore; 11-10-2011 at 05:58 AM.
"...it's the Paradigm Of The Cosmos!" Stewart Copeland on Youtube
668: The Number Of The Guy Next Door To The Beast.
"A random act of kindness; it keeps my heart in shape!" - Late8
Bookmarks