ours loves using his, as do we 'cos he's a noisy fecker.
Also means he walks in with it preassembled out of his people carrier, get's the stool and leads and he's ready. But that's another problem - him practising endless paradiddles while we are trying to set everything else up (and he has to have himself amped up before everyone else !).
When he uses a reasonable kit, it sounds pretty good I have to say.
Originally Posted by paultheoneyoulove
We use one on open mic night every Wednesday sounds good
FS Digitech Harmony Man
http://forum.musicradar.com/showthre...65#post1391465
this is an ageing thread but only just noticed it.
the drummer in my old blues band used an electronic kit live. he had a big Roland amp ( like a mini PA in combo form) so volume was no problem. He used to take a feed off the PA so he could also use it as a monitor for vocals.
Not having cymbals crash near my head height was a major blessing!
The main problem was the sensitivity settings. On some stages he would have drums triggered by stuff like low bass notes from the bass player's amp. He then had to turn the sensitivity down/off so his technique was robbed of any dynamics.
Breeding mammals with insects is my personal bugbear.
I play drums in a 1980s synthpop-type band and, for us, an electronic kit is pretty essential. The output goes through the main FOH PA system and we also mix a click track with the drums output so I can monitor this in-ear. We're at rehearsal stage at the moment, soon to gig, but it seems to be working well and enables us to put out a pretty tight overall sound.
We have experienced a little nuisance triggering from strong low frequencies which I've overcome by tweaking sensitivity/threshold settings and, playing our style of music, that hasn't really affected their performance.
It won't sound anything like real drums. If you're playing a style that normally uses synth drums it'll be fine (although a mixed acoustic / electronic kit will still be better) but for rock it will sound like utter arse.
No Forbidding Allowed
My band made (another) Xmas song: https://soundcloud.com/polarityman/p...in-vallhalla-2
Have you tried decoupling the drums frame from the floor by using rubber blocks or similar?
I play bass in a covers pub band where our drummer, a former pro, has both an acoustic and an electronic kit. He prefers to use the electronic kit because...
- It's easy to shift
- It's quick to set up
- We can turn down in smaller rooms or where the venue prefer that people can still converse
- The sounds are good (it's an up-market Roland kit)
- He can use a range of sounds where the songs demand it or are complimented by them
- His acoustic kit is VERY LOUD in rehearsals and we want to be able to hear what we're doing when rehearsing!
- He occupies a smaller footprint than the full acoustic kit
- He doesn't have to be in the middle of the band if it makes more sense for him to be to one side
- Feedback from punters (and more significantly) from venues has been favourable
Sound great so far doesn't it? There is a catch....
Half the time in larger/louder venue we're struggling to hear him and you're not playing with the kind of conviction you get when the kick and snare are booting you up the arse. We've got the monitors straining (which leads to feedback) and are also using an old Fender Bassman 100w as an onstage monitor. As the band is a five-piece and our delivery is becoming more - erm - visceral these days, the debate has opened up again.
It would be good to stick with electronic drums for all the reasons cited above but can anyone offer any suggestions on improving volume and feel on stage? Most of the dedicated drum monitors we've seen appear to be 100w or less and so more suited to practice than stage.
Our drummer had one of these http://www.gak.co.uk/en/roland-tda-7...amplifier/5777 or something very,very similar if it wasn't that. They are big and expensive but it was a great sounding thing. They are discontinued now so you'd need to look for one 2nd hand.
Breeding mammals with insects is my personal bugbear.
We used to play with a Roland TDK kit, the built in samples were pretty bad so we midi'ed it up to a laptop and triggered Steven Slate samples. For onstage monitoring we used 2 X Mackie SRM450 active speakers put in front of the V-drums and then also had the drums piped into IEM's for those of us who used them. Having a loud stereo spread in front of the kit helped a lot, just having th drums into the PA and then piped back through the stage wedges never seemed enough some how, just seemed "wrong" after twenty years of playing with acoustic kits and the volume behind you that comes with acoustic kits.
To get the best out of an electronic kit you need something that goes down to around 60hz for the kick, this can be a single mono actice subwoofer, placed in front the kick drum and then 2 active monitors for the snare, hat, tomes and cymbals which need to be panned in stereo like a real kit. If it all comes out in mono from one speaker it doesn't sound real enough
After a few gigs I got the drummer to start using a real snare, but a quiet oil damped skin snare. That worked well as the electronic cymbals could be turned down, the electronic kick always sounded awesome anyway and so did the toms.
2 years on though and a few thousand pounds later he's back to an acoustic kit, for all the problems you still can't beat a real kit
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