V-Drums TD-20

I was at Turnkey in London yesterday buying some bits and bobs and had an opportunity to play around with some of their electronic kits. They had the new(ish) TD20 and I was completely blown away by the sounds and the touch of it. The cymbals were great and the snare drum was picking up all the ghost notes etc.

Anyone have any longer experience of this both from a practice and recording stand point. I have the TD8 and I don't really use it anymore because it was affecting my snare drum technique when I switched back to real drums. I now use a combo of DDrums and Vdrums for 'quiet' practice.

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Originally posted by GaryL:
I was at Turnkey in London yesterday buying some bits and bobs and had an opportunity to play around with some of their electronic kits. They had the new(ish) TD20 and I was completely blown away by the sounds and the touch of it. The cymbals were great and the snare drum was picking up all the ghost notes etc.

Anyone have any longer experience of this both from a practice and recording stand point. I have the TD8 and I don't really use it anymore because it was affecting my snare drum technique when I switched back to real drums. I now use a combo of DDrums and Vdrums for 'quiet' practice.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You said "I was completely blown away by the sounds and the touch of it" and then you said you use ddrum; ddrum module or just trigger ?

Hard to believe someone who have ddrum module can be blown away by the sound of TD 20 [img]eek.gif[/img]

I've had both. ddrum3 (the discontinued one that everyone wants) and the TD-10. We have the TD-20 at the store. The ddrum is simple to use, with a bare bones feature set and works reliably, but the TD-20 has all the bells and whistles - though you currently can't add sounds or sample and does much, much more. Maybe that's what he liked about it. Since the the ddrum2 is long gone, the TD-20 is the current state of the art.

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Originally posted by Vdrummer:
but the TD-20 has all the bells and whistles

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes if you like bells and whistles Don't buy a ddrum, TD 20 is perfect for that, but he said he was surprised by the sound of TD 20, maybe they are better then TD 10 but compare to ddrum... [img]eek.gif[/img]

I`m from Sweden and have had all the Clavia Ddrums models.

Now i have the td-20 and i love it madly.
I teach a lot on them and done some work in my studio
with them.
If you have money, trust you feeling and jump ond Td -20 train
Hell even my tinutus loves them [img]smile.gif[/img]

Jan Jansson / Sweden

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Originally posted by jan jansson:
I`m from Sweden and have had all the Clavia Ddrums models.

Now i have the td-20 and i love it madly.
I teach a lot on them and done some work in my studio
with them.
If you have money, trust you feeling and jump ond Td -20 train
Hell even my tinutus loves them [img]smile.gif[/img]

Jan Jansson / Sweden

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting point of view from someone who had both, what make you change from ddrum to TD-20 ?

For several years, I did all the electronic drum/percussion reviews for Electronic Musician magazine, and have done electronic drum reviews for MD too. I enjoyed the ddrum3 when I had it but it and the ddrum4 have some limitations.

ddrum is not stereo, or even pseudo (via reverb as the TD-20 is) and the samples have some compression to economize space. Their sounds are only as good as their samples. The ddrum4 has some samples they created from their great endorsers which are very good. Most have too much reverb for my purposes and that cannot be removed, since it's part of the sound. In the studio, you're better off with a dry sound and letting the studio put a high quality verb like a lexicon or something on it. You can truncated the sound (shorten the decay) but the verb will still be part of the sound. You can check out their demo's at their site. Personally, I find the demos to sound like an electronic kit, even when they don't intend them to. But all electronic kits suffer from that.

The TD-20 has things designed to create more natural rolls (doesn't entirely work), positional timbre changes and many dozens of other features, clicks, backing tracks, sequencers, to make it more realistic than just a sample playback unit, as the ddrum is. A big problem with the ddrum unit is that it has a very limited amount of memory (sounds), compared to the Roland unit. For those reasons the Roland is the SOTA drum brain. Go to a Roland drum clinic and you'll probably end up singing the same song we are. I do think ddrum makes the best acoustic triggers.

Brad

If i'm going to drop down $4k - $5k for a set of electronic drums like the TD-20, I'm going to have to be able to play them live. I just don't think Electronic drums can cut through a mix in a live band situation clubbing and doing weddings, like an acoustic set can. I'd have to use real cymbals.

You would need a separate system for the drums and couldn't go through the main mix because you would drop out when a vocal smothered you. That means you have to now bring your own amp and speakers in addition to real cymbals and then your vdrums. That's a lot of equipment to carry around for a gigging musicians without roadies.

Al

I agree with some of your points. I'd use real cymbals too, and did when I used the ddrum3 in the studio. I also made a point of avoided fast rolls that might have that machine gun electronic kit sound. In a small band that brings it's own PA one of those Roland monitor systems they designed for electronic drums would be plenty and are actually very compact. The rest of the band might not be able to hear you that well though. An JBL EON or Mackie 450 (self powered monitor/FOH speakers) could also work.

That's why I only play acoustic drums. However, I've seen a few drummers who used the TD-10 live and through a club system (with tons of power and subs) and it cut as well or better than a well miked kit in the same venue. I've also been toying with the idea of using IEM's and a BD trigger that would provide me with as much bass drum sound as I want in my mix. I wouldn't send it to FOH and would only use it for monitoring. In a loud club, I mainly need to hear BD in my mix.

I tested the triggering speed on the original td-7 which was as bad as 14 milliseconds. My ddrum 3 was consistently around 3 milliseconds. The second gen TD-7's were around 8, and the TD-10 was under 5.