halcyoI am very much itching to aquire a fairly basic, but decent e-drum kit to work with DFHS, C&V, and EZ Drummer. When I look around at most commercial e-drums, they are RIDICULOUSLY expensive. WHY?! I’ve played the TD-20 at Sam Ash a few times, and although it is very cool/fun, it really the hell isn’t worth $5000 god damn dollars! What are these manufacturers thinking? I’m sure they figure it’s a smaller market, but christ, that’s probably because they charge at least 2-3 times as much as they should for the technology. I’m lookin’ around at just the kick drum PAD costing $400. C’mon, that is just impossible. What in the hell is in these things that could possibly cost that much to develop and produce? Honestly, for the built-in sounds you get with even the top of the line TD-20, I would say that it would be worth a grand. I can see the nice pads/stands etc, for another grand.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that they are nice products, and they are alot of fun to play, but I think they are going to be really pissed off when people start to realize that you can get sounds that are FAR better for just a couple hundred bucks with some of the nice drum sample libraries out there nowadays.
All this being said, is it possible to make DIY homemade pads that are as nice as Roland’s? The technology of a e-drum pad doesn’t really seem all that complicated, but is Roland really that ahead of the curve?
halcyo
WhittenORIGINAL: halcyo
When I look around at most commercial e-drums, they are RIDICULOUSLY expensive. WHY?! I’ve played the TD-20 at Sam Ash a few times, and although it is very cool/fun, it really the hell isn’t worth $5000 god damn dollars!
I agree.
It’s hard for me to justify an e-kit when $5k buys you such an amazing acoustic kit.
Damian BluntORIGINAL: halcyo
All this being said, is it possible to make DIY homemade pads that are as nice as Roland’s?
halcyo
Yes!
http://www.toontrack.com/forum/tt.aspx?forumid=52
The colour scheme may not be to your taste butI thougt this guy had done a great job
http://www.vdrums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31616
Damian Blunt - Toontrack
Quality Assurance
Betatesting
halcyoI agree.
It’s hard for me to justify an e-kit when $5k buys you such an amazing acoustic kit.
You could probably buy 2 amazing acoustic kits for that much!
I am really considering a simple DIY solution to this, but I really don’t know if I have the electrical/construction confidence to do it. I probably do, but I get all wigged out about messin’ something up.
You think any of the experienced DIY’ers would consider a ‘commissioned project’?
halcyo
Xiek Have you considered a midi controller?
http://www.alternatemode.com/trapkat.shtml
LOVE mine.
Up the Hammers
paspallum Halcyo
Dude you are so right!
And I think the point that you were also trying to make here is that if Roland started selling their kits for $1000 then…. 100X more people would buy them!
I built my own edrum kit using a real drumkit that that I fitted with pearl mesh (noiseless) heads and 50 cent piezio transducers for triggers (they work as well as the Fishman purple dots) the triggers went into an Alesis DM5 module.
I tried to build a hihat controller but that wasn’t easy and didn’t work well at all. (so I had to mic a real set of hi-hats – easy to mic and not ‘noisey for teh neighbourhood)
The DM5’s internals sounds ssuck BIG TIME
So I used midi out to Battrey, BFD or EZDrummer
I could never get the ‘curve’ of the DM5 to play the samples in my samplers in a natrual way… I couldn’t get the full range from 0 to 127 layers to play and respond from my snare… and I tried weekly for over three years… it was always a limited range… I’m guessing here but it was like only 25-30% range at one time…(do you want your kit soft all the time? Loud all the time? Or in the middle all the time?
The kit could play a ‘groove’ sure…. and better for a drummer to play than a piano style keyboard… but I don’t play drums and no drummers that I had use it were really ‘taken’ with it.
NOW a drummer friend of mine has a Roland TD20 kit and he’s left it at my studio…
It IS WAY better than my D-m5 setup… but yeah you are SOOOOOO right… the internal sounds in the TD-20 are not as good as ANY 16 bit samples sets that you use on a computer… not even close.
I reckon some company will get together with BFD or Toontrack and create an affordable human interface (E-Kit) in a package that includes their software and will work seamlessly… but I guess this would be 2-5 years in the future still.
Paspallum
Garrett Scroggin If you have time, patience and Ebay skillz, you can probably build a great kit piece by piece.
I have a 14 piece kit based on the TD-6 brain (11 inputs, using insert cables on the dual trigger inputs and chaining bass triggers). I got everything from Ebay over the period of about a month, and it cost about 800 in the end. Note that I’m not talking about the mesh stuff. Still, it’s fine for my amateur drumming.
Check out http://www.trya.us/studio.htm, there are some pics.
"http://www.trya.us" | "http://www.myspace.com/jwilliamsband" | "http://onebadoyster.com" | "http://www.bandmix.com/gscroggin"
Dave LancianiORIGINAL: Xiek
Have you considered a midi controller?
http://www.alternatemode.com/trapkat.shtml
LOVE mine.
These things are surprisingly expensive, too!! They’re still around $1,100 US! They are very cool. I saw Future Man from the Flecktones using one with DFH Superior – If you closed your eye’s, you’d swear it was a real kit.
But still expensive.
I actually bought TWO of those cheapie ION kits ($300 each) at a Target retail store, and built them together as a single kit (plus spare pads and pedals left over from the 2nd kit that wouldn’t fit). Total cost – $600.
Is it as good as a Roland kit. NOOOOOOO WAAAAYYYY! But does it do what I need it to do? Yup. They’re basically the same as one of those older ALESIS edrum kits that are obsolete with thinner support bars. And the brains is basically an ION-modified SR-16 with trigger inputs instead of a MIDI input.
MIDI’d into my computer with EZ Drummer. Listen to some of my stuff. It works. Cheap.
http://www.dimaensionxblog.blogspot.com http://sites.google.com/site/deadsidemanor/ "Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny." Frank Zappa
fulrmrO.K. I know this is and old post, but I just built my own kit from some DYI triggers that were premade and work great! Cheap too, even when compaired to external triggers from Roland. These are internally mounted and as sensitive and responsive as my Hart Dynamics pads. I installed them myself in about an hour for my whole kit. http://www.musiciansnearyou.com/. I have a 7 piece Smokey Chrome Pearl Forum set. 8″, 10″, 12″, 14″, 16″ Toms, 22″x16″ Kick and standard 14″ matching snare. All rack mounted. DW 5002AD3 Accelorator pedal. Gibraltar/ Hart Dynamics Hybrid Rack (just stuff I put together because I had it). All converted with internal triggers, Hart Dynamics Magnum mesh heads’ REMO Muffl Sound Control (cut out to various sizes depending on the tom size – this cuts back on cross talk and double triggering) Alesis D4, Roland TD-3 modules. Various Hart Dynamics Ecymbals, a couple of Traps cymbals, some Alesis Surge cymbals on the way and a variable hi-hat contoller that mounts to a standard hi-hat stand ( got this from the same place as the triggers- very responsive). All together so far I have about about $1500 invested! All the diversity of edrums and the great looks and “Rocker Bling” of an real acoustic set. I’m going upgrade my laptop and start using S2.0. Your rant is justified!
DYI Acoustic Pearl Forums 7 piece conversion, 56 Input MegaDrum, Roland TD-3, Alesis D4, AMD Phenom x4 9650 (2.4GHz) Quad Core, 8g RAM,
ToddAnyone check out the new feature of Toontrack Solo?
Toontrack solo 1.2 also introduces support for Rockband® and Guitar Hero® drum controllers, expanding further the appeal of the award winning range of Toontrack products.
Oli Poulsen How come nobody is mentioning http://www.2box.se/
They are pretty cheap compared to anything from Roland and Yamaha…and have dual triggers on all pads, and three zones on the cymbals.
Anybody actually try these?
I know they aren’t out yet…but should be very soon.
Pro Tools 10 HD3 MacPro Quad 2.66 OSX 6.8 DTXtreme III special All S2.0 packs iMac 27 3.4 i7 OSX 8.2 Pro Tools 10 HD
halcyoWhere do you see any price information on the 2box Drumit 5? It DOES look like an interesting product. It is at the very least a very good lucking e-drum kit! I’d love to know more details!
Oli Poulsen I see it locally here in Denmark…and I can see that british sites like Dolhpin have it at £ 1599
But it is not out yet…and has been overdue for a while.
Looks exciting to me…and is even made in Sweden, so just wondered why the swedes don’t seem aware of a local product like this one.
Pro Tools 10 HD3 MacPro Quad 2.66 OSX 6.8 DTXtreme III special All S2.0 packs iMac 27 3.4 i7 OSX 8.2 Pro Tools 10 HD
BUCK Has anyone used the Alesis USB pro kit with the surge cymbols? All I need is a good trigger seeing as though I have tons of drum samps in my mac.
I wanna use it with battery 3. Im wondering if they are as good a trigger as the roland drums which are over priced.
Please log in to read and reply to this topic.
No products in the cart.
Get all the latest on new releases,
updates and offers directly to your inbox.
Note: By clicking the 'I WANT IN' button, you will not be creating a Toontrack user account. You will only sign up to get our newsletters, offers and promotions to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time from a link at the bottom of each email. If you want to learn more about our privacy policy, please find detailed information here.
