Tag Archives: electronic percussion

E-drum upgrade

I’ve been playing electronic percussion almost as long as I’ve been drumming. I bought a set of Alesis DM10 electronic drums a few years back to replace my aging Yamaha e-drums. I was sold on the fact that Alesis had “real-feel” mylar heads that were tunable. Though the new pads had much more sensitivity and some decent sounds from the stock drum brain, I didn’t like the feel of playing them. The drumheads turned out to be louder than any rubber pads and were difficult to get stick bounce from while playing.

I recently upgraded the heads to mesh with a conversion kit from 682Drums. The upgrade was pretty quick and painless. Oh what a difference! The bounce is incredibly satisfying.

Here’s a clip of me playing along to one of the new Sumptus Ignis songs in production to test them out.

New toy: the Mandala drum pad 2.0

I’ve just picked up a gently used Mandala 2.0 drum pad.

As you can see, it’s huge! It completely dwarfs the pads on my DS-10.

The black beauty snare emulation program seems to work great given the three minute demo I put it through. I had a harder time navigating the virtual brain software but if I can figure out how to involve some of my other midi gear, this looks a very powerful system.