Making Excellent Budget Electronic Drums from Acoustic Drums Pt. 1

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Part 1 of Making Excellent Budget Electronic Drums from Acoustic Drums.

You could buy a high-end Yamaha electronic kit for $4800. Or you could buy a high-end Roland kit for $7000. Or, you could buy some used and new pieces from various companies, and then connect them to your computer to trigger drum sampling software, for equal (if not better) results, for far less money (just around $2000). Your choice. The options are out there!

Join us over at vdrums.com/forum for tons of information and help from friendly drummers just like yourself.


More to come in this series. Stay tuned!


all music featured in this video written and performed by Chris Caulder. There are no copyright infringements in this video. All material written, edited, and produced by Chris Caulder.

Thanks to Rasoo for the video series title!

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• v-drums
• roland
• toontrack
• drums
• sampling
• triggers
• mesh
• DIY
• superior
• 2.0
• acoustic

[Pr0294]

this is awesome. i just have a couple of questions. do you use both the td 8 and the td 3 at the same time? or either the 8 or the 3? also, how did you get so many cymbals plugged into the modules? did you need some kind of splitter?

[chriscauldermusic]

@Pr0294 No, just TD8. I had enough inputs for all the cymbals (two crashes and a ride) because I only play one rack tom, and then a pad on the side for a cross-stick sound which uses tom 2's input. No splitters necessary. Hope that helps!

[tyubacka]

Well done Chris.

You didn't to mention that all of the skills you are practising are exactly the same as what you would play on an acoustic kit.

When people complain to me the E-kit is 'just not the same', I have to say, "No,it isn't. It's WAY better."

Playing an A to E converted kit has made me a more versatile player. I'm sure you would say the same. I could never afford to buy a kit that sounds as good as my TD20, so I have to agree my desire to practice is greater now.

Go the Left Handers!!

[chriscauldermusic]

@tyubacka Right on. :)

[ransisua]

sorry, but some people think that $2000 is still too much. They'd rather go for alesis usb studio kit which cost about $1000, included pedal and vsti. Cheap bastards, ai?lol

I think Yamaha PCY is better bang for the buck. But yeah, prob difficult to find the used one.And IMHO RHH135 is also better bang for the buck. It even has a pressure sensitive sensor.But prob won't work well on your TD8. 2 cheap modules are also nice alternative.

Anyway, good tutorial there. love your statement at 4:40.lol

[chriscauldermusic]

@ransisua Without a doubt the PCY is better bang for the buck. I've had good luck with the PCY series from Yamaha but I haven't tried the RHH. I read the Yamaha and Roland hi-hats don't get along well with their opposite modules. I'd stay away from the Alesis stuff personally... I think it's built cheaply.... the Surge cymbals have fallen apart on many digital drummers. Two cheap modules such as two matching TD-3s would give you a LOT of input options, for probably $300 (for both).

[chriscauldermusic]

@mw2hansberry5000 Good luck-- it's all in the drum sample software I use-- use a search engine to find the Toontrack web site.

[chriscauldermusic]

@DrummerGrrrl Not worth it... too hard to turn into proper triggers. If you join the vdrums.com forum, you can get CY-8s (what I use mainly) for about $60 each, and that usually includes a Roland cymbal holder (the top part of a normal cymbal stand). Pretty cheap if you ask me. :) Good luck!

[DrummerGrrrl]

I so want to build my own e-kit. Money is the problem right at the moment, though. Say, could one use those black plastic practice "cymbals"? They are really cheap in the drum catalogs I get.

[mw2hansberry5000]

So cool im tring to fuse my roland kit with my drum kit hope it sounds like your kit