Electronic Drums...your suggestions?

[mwm]

Peter -- can't wait to hear your set and your review of the new drums. [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

[Groovemeister]

The best solution for the money is to put mesh heads on an acoustic kit.

The sound is loud enough so you can hear it, but quiet enough so you can practice all hours. It also has the truest response and feel of a drum set, as you are actually playing... err... a drumset...

Electronics wise, I had some stuff through Roland which was great, a TD10-brain and pads. Nice easy to use boxes with a tonne of features. Live I always use a dDrum modue though. It triggers much faster and the sounds are 100 times better than Roland, and 200 times better than Yamaha.

Let us know how you get on...

MP

[Groovemeister]

I forgot to add,

Ddrum went under some time ago...

It looks like the electronic drum world has claimed its first victim. On the 29th January, Swedish parent company Clavia sold Ddrum to its American distributors Armadillo Enterprises for an undisclosed sum. This followed various production problems to do with outsourcing production and Clavia have said they want to concentrate on their synth products, rather than drums.

Armadillo have said that all current kit models are ceasing but that they intend to continue with the Ddrum triggers.

Many average drummers haven?t taken Ddrum as a serious contender in the electronic drum market, but without them, the whole market would have been very different.

Ddrum were years ahead of their time for a period of some 15 years and really deserve a lot of credit for most of the ideas that we take for granted in our kits.

Ddrum started in 1983 in Stockholm and their first product was a Percussion Plate. This was a 9? square flat metal box with a rubber disk on the top. When you hit the disc with a drum stick, a sound was triggered from an EPROM removable chip inside. The sounds were 8 bit samples (low quality by today?s standards) but the dynamics were great and it was the only pad of its kind. You have got to remember that the rest of the world was using Simmons drums ? big hexagonal plastic pads that triggered a very basic analogue synthetic sound ? hardly realistic.

An American entrepreneur saw the Percussion Plate and ordered 25 pieces. The design was cleaned up and Ddrum launched their first proper product, the Digital Percussion Plate DP1 with its square rubber pad and red graphics (continued by Ddrum to the end) in 1984. The revised DP1 had a cartridge slot for the EPROM chips and despite each pad only being able to play one sound at a time, it sold well to professionals who could see the potential (and at the time the technology was not cheap).

Ddrums first kit came in 1984 too. The ddrumRack and ddrumStudio were five piece kits with real head pads and a modular ?brain? with slots for eight sound modules, all mounted in a wooden 19? rack case. The kits visuals were kept right up until the Ddrum 3 and replaceable cartridges provided the sounds. However it was expensive so Ddrum released the ddrumPlus! (complete with exclamation mark) which was a 6 channel system which could hold 4 samples on each channel.

The ddrum2 came in 1986 and this is when Ddrum got taken really seriously as players like Larry Londin and Jim Keltner started to use them in the LA studio scene. This unit had 8 channels, 16 voices and MIDI and featured something called Drumhead Vibration Algorithm which prevented the ?machine gun? effect when samples were repeatedly triggered. Sounds were layerable by velocity (velocity crossfades) and SoundPacs (cartridges with 2 to 20 sounds each) could be purchased to increase the sounds.

The ddrumAT was a version of the ddrum2 which was just aimed at the triggering market which was taking off. This was released in 1990 and was the only Ddrum brain which wasn?t in the traditional red. Ddrum triggers were released for it and these became the industry standard (and many would argue that they still are today, 15 years later).

The Big Daddy of all came in 1993 with the ddrum3. This was an immensely powerful unit that would still be selling well today if it were still produced. The trigger interface had the fastest response time of any unit (including all the modern units) of 1.5milliseconds. Not only were the pads incredibly sensitive (1000 levels in comparison with 127 on most units today) but they were also positionally sensitive and could tell where the pad was hit as well as how hard. It could record over its digital ins (but had no direct sampling input) and had a flash memory system to save and load whole kits. You could load your own samples in from a computer via MIDI and the sound quality was stunning. The brain was rack mountable and EVERY big tour of the time had one in the drum racks. Heavy metal drummers got into Ddrum in a big way when they realised they could trigger their ridiculously fast double kick patterns very lightly and allow the electronic to make it sound big, fat, loud and even. It is also the only kit you can take in a studio and make it sound EXACTLY like an acoustic kit, which is precisely why so many pros had/have one. It doesn?t sound big and processed, it just sounds like a real kit with microphones on it. If you have one of these ? keep it.

The ddrum4 was released in the late ?90?s and is (was) a scaled down ddrum3. You can still load your own samples and the triggering is still superb but ddrum began to get behind the competition at this point ? the brain had no click, no backing tracks and no whistles and bells, which is exactly why the pros continued to buy it but the general public wanted more.

It would appear that ddrum and Armadillo are continuing product support for the products so I wouldn?t worry if you have recently bought one ? in fact, go and buy one if you find one as they are very reliable and road worthy.

So, with new owners for ddrum, we will look and see what happens but an era has definitely passed.


MP

[donu]

Originally posted by Groovemeister:
I forgot to add,

Ddrum went under some time ago...

It would appear that ddrum and Armadillo are continuing product support for the products so I wouldn?t worry if you have recently bought one ? in fact, go and buy one if you find one as they are very reliable and road worthy.

So, with new owners for ddrum, we will look and see what happens but an era has definitely passed.

MP

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No the futur of electronic for ddrum is not end, on this ddrum forum www.ddrums.com/forum/ we have 2 responsables from Armadillo who talk with us and they said that the new ddrun acoustic line ddrum is a way to make money to build a ddrum 5

Come join us and go on Suggestion part of the forum for add you suggestion for ddrum 5 [img]wink.gif[/img]

I totally agree with you: ddrum beat by FAR all other electronic module ( unless you like electronic drum sound ) [img]cool.gif[/img]

[Suspiria]

Peter - I can't wait hear those recordings and I would also appreciate your input on some of the questions I asked in my initial post.

Hmmh...That delay sounds really frustrating. Ideally, I would still be playing in a studio once a week - so I am not ONLY relying on the electronic drums. I will have to experience it first hand. I don't see electronic drums as a permanent substitute, but rather something I can always fool around on to keep that feel for playing.

Btw, Fuse is still around, he simply changed his name to got_a_matchgrip? ! How could you overlook his distinct posting style? [img]wink.gif[/img]

[peter c]

They are all set up. I just
don't have the recording and
video set up, yet. Soon. I
promise. Soon.

[img]cool.gif[/img]

[peter c]

OK, I just had a chance to try a few
different combinations that I liked.
See if you like these sounds:

DTXTreme Drum Samples

Another On-Board Module Play-Along

[img]cool.gif[/img]

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 12, 2005 04:16 PM: Message edited by: peter c ]</font>

[cjbdrm]

I have the same kit as MRHet(second post). Yamaha DTExpress. Everything he said there I agree with-I've been very pleased with it.

Mine has been collecting dust for a little while now. If you run out of options, PM me. Maybe we can work something out.

I never noticed a delay thing either. 3-4 milliseconds is the same amount of delay as hearing the kit through a monitor speaker 4 feet away (speed of sound is approx. 1.1 ft/sec).

[peter c]

Regarding the DTX-Press TP-65 versus
the TPS-65s pads - the 65's are only
dual-zone. The TP-65's are triple-
zoned. You really want the 65's. In
my opinion, they are worth the extra
money. With the DTX-TremeIIS module, I
have noticed better sensitivity too.
On the snare and high-hat, this has
been crucial, for me.

[img]cool.gif[/img]

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 13, 2005 07:17 PM: Message edited by: peter c ]</font>

[Suspiria]

Thanks for keeping the replies coming. I am pretty much overwhelmed at the moment, but will read all of this within the next days.

Peter: Thanks for making the effort of posting some samples. You are right - those rimshots are wonderful. As is the general sound of that snare and kick.

In the meantime I should give you guys some more restrictions to work with:
-My E drums would never be used in a live setting. They'll only be for home-use.
-I am still not 100% sure about this: Isn't it a lot cheaper to buy a module and only the necessary pads I will require? A lot of the offers I see on website have 6-7 piece sets. I really don't need that.
-I would prefer not to apply triggers/pads/mesh to shells of an acoustic set. I'll either get a full acoustic or full electronic set if you know what I mean - even if that means spending more money.
-500 bucks was only my initial budget. If it costs more, I'll pay more, but certainly would like to remain under 1000.

Thanks again.


EDIT: As for purchasing a module, would this be an option:

http://www.hartdynamics.com/modules/td8.html
I could even settle for something like this [great price]:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ayphotohosting

<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ April 12, 2005 04:33 PM: Message edited by: Suspiria ]</font></font>

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 12, 2005 04:35 PM: Message edited by: Suspiria ]</font>