Electronic Drums

[909one]

I was thinking that as an interesting alternative to sharing a pracitce space for rehearsal that the band would instead invest in a electronic drumset to have quiet practices. I know that even the best electronic kit is no substitute for the real thing, but there have got to be electronic kits that would be adequete for practice in this way. What do you guys think is best electronic kit in terms of playability? I have looked at the Roland stuff, the ddrum, and the Pintech, but not being a drummer its hard to say what really does the best job in mimicing the real thing.

[drewsifer]

the roland v drums with the mesh heads are awesome! you really only need one mesh head for the snare... but the bounce and feel is great! these kits are great for practicing. I have a basic vdrum model with the rubber pads and wish I had one mesh snare. the 808 kits ROCKS MY FACE OFF!

[dj biscuit]

The V-drums absolutely ROCK. They feel like a real drum, and depending on the module, sounds just as good. The dual zone pads are freaking awesome, and the snare reacts to every hit just like a real snare. AMAZING, but very expensive right now

[Chaorta]

I love the Roland V Drum pads and the DDrum sounds.

Make a mutant.

[drewsifer]

But have you tried this: I have an old v drum kit:
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I plug the output directly into a fender bullet practice amp. I put it on the lead channel (gain at 5.5 volume on 2) and ROCK out! It sounds freaking sweet! super hardcore. It reminds me of a session I did back in school where we processed all our drum tracks thru a ratt pedal! its the Bomb baby!

[Drengur Grar]

Synare analog drum (this thing was rad)
Simmons kit (octogonal Phill Collins style haha) SD9 and SD6 modules
roland:
808
909
505
707/727
Compu-Rythym
Vermona

[GearJunkie]

I've got far too much electronic drum equipment for one guitar player, but I've got the following:

-Drumkat (V1.0) (even the people at drumkat were surprised one of these still exists, as they're on v8.0 now). It's got 10 pads on it and 8 assignable trigger inputs. I love this thing.
-Tama hexagonal trigger pads
-Dauz 5" pads
-Some old Pintech pad
-Pintech bass trigger
-dDrum bass drum trigger
-Simmons kit with hexagonal pads

Basically, I bought the drumkat for my old drummer (we used to have two drummers in the band. one with v-drums, the other with an acoustic kit). The V-drummer quit, so instead of going the click track route, I added some electronics to the kit (drumkat and ddrum bass drum trigger) so we could still get the feel live. There, I sent the midi information to a K2000 rack module that I loaded up with heavily tweaked samples and from there had assignable outputs for the PA (bass drum and toms, snare, hats+cymbals). It was a great working setup.

If you have the chance to use your own samples, I'd recommend it. Something like the Drumkat or a Roland SPD-20 attached to a midi input to your computer can allow you to play "live" drums through Reason, BFD or whatever. It's a lot better than bashing away at a keyboard, you can play it at home, and if it's 2 in the morning and you want real sounding drums.... connect your module, put on your headphones and you can have a silent studio. I love the Pod for the same reason.

The Simmons kit I bought only because it was so cheap and I couldn't pass it up ($100). It's got individual outputs for every sound (which is great for recording) and the second I turned it on, I hit the snare and instantly recognized it from "Blue Monday" by New Order. Kind of a cool kitsch factor.