Roland V-drums

[tfarny]

I have been interested in learning the drums for a long time, and I played one song on them during my recent gig. Last weekend I went down to sam ash and tried a set of Roland  'v-drums' - they were actually a hell of a lot of fun considering they're not actual drums, and apartment-friendly which is a huge plus. I could come home from teaching and bash the drums at midnight!
I saw a set on craigs list for $800 including everything. Anybody own a set, and have a review or recommendations, or prefer some other brand which I should check out?

 

[shanejw]

I like them.  Lots of fun.  The drummer in my church band has a TD20 set and they feel better than acoustic drums to my untrained hands.  I use a Roland Trigger kit with the TD6 Module for recording and have been pretty pleased.  Snare isn't as nice on the TD6.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

You can use them in a small project studio to record .smf to record your drum performance, then assign the midi performance over to the DFH plugin fore even better sounds.

You get the best of both worlds, real sounding drums played by a real drummer to a click.

 

[tfarny]

But you can also do simple stereo line out recording too, right? I'm not going to learn MIDI at this stage. Glad to hear they get positive reviews from working musicians. Hmmm...

 

[Kvebbs]

Even better you can assign the set as a midi-controller directly and use the DFH or EzDrummer etc drums as you play.. provided you have the soundcard for it Don't know much about the actual electrical kits though - all I know is a want one. But wheeere to put it:S

 

[bpmorton777]

yeah, with the midi thing you could fix any bad timing issues afterward.

Brian

 

[kboman]

They are a dream to set up, I'll tell you that. And on a small band podium in an old theatre with very limited space and no tolerance for sound leakage into, say, woodwind mics, they are a life saver.

 

[dexplosion]

Roland V-drums are very nice, especially the ones with mesh pads.
Yamaha makes great sets as well and are generally cheaper. Some people say the sounds are more reallistic compared to Roland.
I have one of the older Yamaha dtxpress series kits, the dtxpress II I believe. I mainly use it for playing in the midnight hour when I get the "itch" to play and it's late.
The times I've used it to record, I've just used the stereo outputs. I've never used it as a midi controller or anything, so I can't comment on that.
If I were to buy another, I'd probably go with a Roland with mesh pads, mainly due to the feel compared to real drums. The rubber pads don't give the same rebound like when playing on a real set. That's something to think about if you ever plan on moving to acoustic drums.

A word of advice, If buying used, try to actually play the kit, as the pads wear out over time, and sometimes don't trigger well.

 

[ByteFrenzy]

There are basically two drawbacks to digital drums, whatever the make or type:

- Whenever you hit approximately the right area, with approximately the right force, at the right time, you're going to get a "perfect" drum sound played at you - even if you hit well away from the sweet spot, at an angle, whatever. That means you can get away with pretty sloppy playing and could face a hard time if you later want to switch to accoustic drums.

- The cymbals on electronic drums play very differently from the 'real' thing. You may want to combine a real high hat and ride with some electronic crashes and splashes.

On the other hand, my son has an old TD-6 with a mesh head added for the snare and non-electronic HH and ride, and being able to practice on that has helped him improve a lot. He has lessons on accoustic drums but we wouldn't be able to set those up at home, both as far as space goes and due to the loudness.

 

[Tempest]

My church band uses electronic drums, they sound great to me.  :icon_thumright:

 

[yesak67]

800 dollars is a pretty good deal on the v drums.  i play drums (mostly for recordings) and i can honestly say that v drums are the closet electronic drums to the feel of acoustic drums

 

[tfarny]

Just came back from another GC safari, they are closing out the td9 brain (huge customization, rim shots the works) with the cheaper heads, a full set with warranty, throne, and kick pedal will run me $1500 with tax. That thing is pretty stellar, but I may be going in the bass direction next instead of this. Definitely something for the future 'basement man cave' when I eventually get a real house.

 

[Superlizard]

d00d... if ya ain't got t00b drums, you ain't got nuffin'.

:icon_jokercolor:

 

[tfarny]

Hey it would be nice to get a 9-piece maple kit for the barn, but god I'm a guitarist who records sometimes, not a drummer, and I live in a rented apartment in NYC. It's electro or nada, me man, and they would just be for grins & education mainly anyhow.  arty07: arty07:

 

[mayfly]

Just came back from another GC safari, they are closing out the td9 brain (huge customization, rim shots the works) with the cheaper heads, a full set with warranty, throne, and kick pedal will run me $1500 with tax. That thing is pretty stellar, but I may be going in the bass direction next instead of this. Definitely something for the future 'basement man cave' when I eventually get a real house.

wow - that is a good deal.

Aw, go with the drums - bass players are a dime a dozen  :icon_jokercolor:

 

[ByteFrenzy]

I live in a rented apartment in NYC.

You may want to put some extra effort into isolating the bass pedal from the floor. The pads don't carry outside the room you're playing in, but the 'thump-thump' from the bass is pretty present the floor below.