Low end electric drum kits... what's good and bad these days?

Cirrus

Situation: Have many, many song ideas, and want to quickly work up arrangements at home including drum parts. Currently can't demo full arrangements without either programming by mouse, which is *not* very inspiring and takes ages, or driving 30 mins to my lockup where my drummer's kit is set up the wrong way round for me (he's a leftie) so there's 90 minutes of my day gone before I've even thought about putting a mic up, let alone playing the thing!

Plan: Get electronic drum kit for home, use MIDI from it to trigger software drums ITB.

Questions: A quick look on ebay second hand stuff suggests to me that there's lots of stuff in the £150 range that reminds me of my old DT-xpress that I had 15 years ago, but I wonder if the pads on the ~£250-ish kits are better than what I'd have blistered my hands on back then - are they any better at picking up playing dynamics? I recall the DT-xpress pads were pretty one dimensional as far as that went.

Then there seems to be not very much, then suddenly at £600+ second hand we enter the realm of mesh heads. Which presumably feel better, but since I only want to get ideas down I'm not so bothered about that.

So, any suggestions for brands/ranges that are better or worse? Somewhere around £250-£300 second hand?

blobb

For roughing out, I use midi loops. Record against a temp map and when you 'play' the midi loop it will run (for ever!) at tempo bpm. I then click different loops, on the fly, to get the feel for different sections (intro hh>closed hh beat> cymbal variations> fill variations). You can print it to audio as you play around by sending the audio to a bus and back in to an audio track.

It's a bit hit'n'miss to start with but, with practice, I've made full songs using this method - no drums needed. Next level up would be to drop the midi loops into DAW so I get the same hits every time and can lose the in/out bus. Finally, I will go with e-kit for either final mix or if I can't find a suitable loop.

personally, I would go for mesh heads over rubber but understand cost comes into play. I use td9 but, as I'm running via midi (SD2), I'm not too bothered about the drum brain sounds. Feel is what counts for me, I like Roland heads.

Cirrus

Cheers @blobb  . I think some of my songs are *just* complicated enough, in terms of things like having time sig changes every could of bars, that I'd spend more time than I want to with loops just getting them into the shapes I need them in. The nice thing about playing is a; it's fun and inspiring and b; if the bars go 4/4, 6/8, 7/4, 5/4 over the space of ten seconds, it's quick and easy just to hit stuff. 

blobb

indeed, but with a tempo map the bpm will keep time with the 'audition' of the loop.

Using this system gets you close enough without having to sit there lining midi notes up or needing to buy a kit. Verse/chorus type arrangements would be a doddle to get right, I use it on some pretty complex stuff. Dead easy, and fun to do as you are 'playing' the drum samples in real time. If I'm honest, I haven't had to go back to the e-kit for a while.

Setting the tempo map up can be easy (I'm now a Mixbus enthusiast, 2 minutes work to set up tempo maps!) but obviously no replacement for enjoying a bit of a bash on a kit. If you want something fun to play, I would definitely go mesh head, snare at least. The vh11 hi hat is also worth thinking about, for me it's much better than the normal 'switch on the floor' thing. You mount it on a standard hh stand c/w foot pedal. Makes it feel like a proper kit. Again, price goes up. For what you want to do I would say mesh snare and midi out would be the min.

I've not played other brands but I know Roland kit takes abuse well!  

Luminous

I find the Alesis stuff quite responsive once you have set it up to your liking.

PolarityMan

Cirrus said:

 if the bars go 4/4, 6/8, 7/4, 5/4 over the space of ten seconds,

Are you me?

Cirrus

Yes. Surprise! *slaps own face* 

Danny1969

I used to use a Roland TD3 for exactly the use you describe .... to be honest because all affordable electronic drums aren't great for subtleties like ghost notes and stuff there's little to choose between the low end if your only going to use them as a tool to record midi. Low end TD kit of Alesis DM be fine