#winning Digital Drum Sticks

Product Information

For those looking for an alternative to Roland, Pearl is coming out swinging. The Pearl e/Merge e/Hybrid electronic drum set is a five-piece kit engineered and designed by Pearl and Korg. For the money, there's no better budget 8-piece kit with mesh heads on the market, whether you're looking for your first set, or an affordable practice e-kit for the home.

Electric drum kits like this Roland somewhat remind me of the Yahama DTX450K, which in my eyes, is a little too overpriced for what you get. I’ve gotten 0% interest for 48 months before with Sweetwater, my favorite instrument retailer. This is one way to make that expensive piece of gear more affordable.

Alesis, along with many other kits, offers the Strike Software Editor for importing sounds to your module. Roland was behind the curve on this and Alesis wins here. There are 40 preset kits on-board the module, which are all of decent quality. We liked ‘American Vintage’, ‘Purple Heart’ and ‘Collectors’ for their obvious DW referencing and there are plenty of presets to cater for most styles of music. If you see a USB type B port (the more square-looking one), all you need to get is a standard USB cable (If one didn’t ship with your kit, I’ve used ones that have come with printers before that I had laying around the house). However, the new module on the Alesis Nitro MAX features 32 new professionaly-recorded presets from BFD, a long-time player in sampled drums. These kits sound incredible for the money. Alesis Nitro MAX folds up nicely for storage

If your electronic drum set module has the 5-pin MIDI port and no USB, you will need to get a MIDI to USB adapter. Again, like the Alesis Nitro, the Alesis Command Mesh suffers from the same sonic issues that kit did. While this might not be an issue for beginners, it surely was for me. For this reason, it’s important that you’re aware that most manufacturer warranties won’t cover re-sold items - meaning that even if your used kit is within the manufacturer warranty period, you won’t be eligible to use the warranty. Expert reviewers with years of hands-on experience testing and owning a wide range of electronic drum sets and with a deep understanding of e-kit technology as it has evolved. The cymbals could use a major overhaul. The Command Mesh offers a 10″ dual-zone snare drum pad, three dual-zone drum pads, three cymbals, two pedals, a bass drum pad, and a drum module.While there are only a few pads on the module, think of them as genre buttons. Within each pad lies several preset kits to choose. The slider isn’t adding artificial reverb, rather the amount of room sound in the mix from the actual sessions.

While I can’t recommend that you do this, many retailers offer wonderful financing options on expensive items, like musical instruments.But where we think this kit will really shine is as a MIDI controller for third-party sounds such as Superior Drummer. It’s less work than doing an acoustic conversion, and you can get playing straight away. Impressively, the DTX402 is also compatible with Yamaha’s free DTX402 Touch app (iOS/Android), which enables deeper kit customisation, additional playing challenges and rewards as players improve.

Then, when the time comes and you need to lay down a powerhouse groove on an acoustic kit, you’ll be far more prepared. There have been seven different versions of this kit produced. For the purposes here, we will only be discussing the most recent iteration, the studio kit. With this kit, you’re getting a lot more options for drums. The Roland TD-27KV is one of the most impressive entries from the e-kit giant — I just wish the pads were bigger. One of the most noteworthy aspects of the TD-50K2 is the digital ride, snare and hi-hats, which plug into the kit's module via USB. The ride not only feels more like a real cymbal thanks to its size and weight, but is also designed to respond more realistically due to multiple sensors on its surface. The snare uses the same digital technology to perform much more authentically than any previous model. We’ve fallen in love with the superb VH-14D digital hi-hats, too. Digital hats have never felt more realistic or responsive and the TD-50K2 is the most affordable kit to include them as standard. Now, for what you get with this kit, it’s a little bit too expensive, if you ask me. Compared to the Alesis options, you may be better off going in that direction.We test everything we feature in this best electronic drums guide and we're always in touch with drum brands to ensure we can get hands-on with the latest kits as soon as we can. We haven't tested all of the new models mentioned above, but this guide will be updated as soon as we have. Best electronic drum sets: how much should you spend on an electronic drum kit?