Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I spent a good deal of time researching electronic kits and ended up looking at both the Roland V-Drum series and the Alesis DM series. Not having a few thousand dollars to spend on a kit I had to go with the best value for the money I did have. The DM-10 X ended up being the one to get. For me I wanted good feeling drums to trigger outside kits as well as good quality sounds internally. I use the Roland V-Drums as the bases for comparison as they are pretty much the Cadillac of electronic drums, and they come in various flavors to suit different budgets. The closest V-Drum that compares in price is the TK-9 series. So how does it measure up? Drum Feel: V-Drums - There is no getting around it. The Roland V-Drum series is the best feeling electronic drums you can find today. They are also one of the most expensive. The mesh heads can't be beat, that's for sure. Now Alesis' RealHead pads have gotten a pretty tough time trying to compete what with the original ones feeling better than a rubber pad, but were more rigid than a natural drum. The DM-10 X... improves on this. Still not close to V-Drum quality and still can get a bit stiff feeling in certain situations, however I compared these pads to the DM-10 Pro kit and I do feel an improvement. These new pads are also thinner than previous drums. If you modify the RealHead drums with a mesh head conversion (DMDrummer has instructions) you get a LOT closer to the right feel, but the V-Drum still inches out ahead. [NOTE: If any of you are planning on getting this kit with the mesh upgrade in mind please note that due to the drum pads different design you will have to use a mod specific to the DM-10 X. I will update when I do the upgrade myself.] All the issues you maybe have heard about the DM-10 having horrible crosstalk between triggers is a thing of the past. No crosstalk between pads. There is even zero crosstalk between the heads and rim triggers. Right out of the box you will be playing the kit with very little hiccups. Okay all of your acoustic live drummers our there listen, because I want you to set your expectations accordingly: NO ELECTRONIC KIT WILL MATCH THE FEEL OF REAL DRUMS. Electronic kits can only do the best they can to get close as they can. Not even the most expensive $5K+ V-Drums will completely feel like the real thing. Cymbal Feel: Tie (sorta) - Roland's VH-11 HiHat feels more genuine, but Alesis' DMPad 12" HiHat is no slouch. If you like getting a HiHat bell sound then the Roland pushes ahead as the VH-11 is a dual zone trigger with the DMPad 12" being single zone. The crash cymbals on the other are pretty much on par with each other with the Alesis getting points for offering larger cymbals, which really does help with the feel of them. I originally wanted to go with the DM-10 Pro kit with the Surge cymbals to get the most realistic feel, however every Pro kit I tried the cymbals had triggering issues (they seemed to like a small sweet spot and not trigger anywhere else on the cymbals). These cymbal pads do have a nice feel to them for being rubber triggers. I have had a little issue with the choke on the crashes having a narrow sweet spot, but this could come from me not doing any fine tuning (will update when I get off my butt and actually tweak my kit). Kit Layout: DM-10 X - No comparison. When it comes to drum size and amount the best TK-9 kit will always come up short to the DM-10 X. The TK-9 sports a single 10" snare and three 8" toms while the DM-10 X has two 10" toms and three 12" (one snare and two toms) drum pads. The DM-10 X offers larger cymbals at two 14" crashes and a 16" ride as opposed to the TK-9's 13" ride and single 12" crash (both Alesis and Roland offer three zone rides). I have been trying out various electronic kits in the 8" and 10" sizes thinking that I would be okay with that, but when this baby came to the house and I started playing on the 10" and 12" heads I was glad I went for this kit. While the larger pads make it trickier to adjust your set the way you like it (due to the pads taking up more space) it's a small price to pay. Hardware: Tie - Both have rugged metal bars with fast locking fasteners. It's pretty easy to make adjustments with wingscrews for no-tool adjustments. Both also have the same limitations like the cymbal stands not being adjustable in regards to their location on the rack. BTW his isn't as big a deal as it sounds. If you get creative with the boom adjustments you can cover a lot of variations in cymbal placement. Sounds: DM-10 X - If sounds are your focus the Alesis DM-10 knocks the ball out of the park. I have played through both the Roland TD-9 drum module and the Alesis DM-10 and I notice a definite difference in the sound quality of the instruments played. The DM-10 sports over 1000 16-bit uncompressed instrument samples as opposed to the TD-9's paltry 552 instrument samples (in compressed mp3 and WAV format at that). The instruments on the DM-10 also sport Dynamic Articulation, which means they have been multi-sampled for variances in timbre based on how hard you hit the instrument. The editing parameters on both sound modules are roughly on par with the TD-9 focusing on drum pitch, muffling and cymbal size and the DM-10 focusing on pitch, decay levels, coarse/fine tuning and pitch based on velocity. The DM-10 gets a sizeable edge in the effects department. The TD-9 mostly focuses on ambient parameters for room size and mic placement along with a 2 band equalizer. The DM-10 does the same for room size and equalization, but also adds compression along with it. On top of that you also have additional effects you can add like chorus, flanger, various delays and more. I still haven't played with all the options on this thing like creating drum kits (I'm looking forward to trying the layered drum options) or editing sounds. Heck I haven't even calibrated the drums yet. I will update as I get more into the DM-10 X. If you want a really good feeling electronic drum kit with some great features at a decent price this is the kit to get.