Donner DED-80 Electric Drum Kit, Electronic Drum Sets for Beginner with 4 Quiet Mesh Drum Pads, 2 Switch Pedal, 180+ Sounds, Throne, On-Ear Headphones, Sticks, and Melodics Lessons Included Black

Product Information

Other essentials include a drum seat, or “throne.” This should be height-adjustable, especially if you’re buying for a young learner who needs room to grow into their new instrument. Headphones are another must for training purposes with an electronic drum kit, and ideally you’ll want these to be the full-size type with ear coverings. (You want to hear the synthesized sound of your drumming, not the actual hits on the mesh heads.) Once players graduate to gigs or jam sessions, an amp will be another must. Just make sure it’s compatible with your output type. Note that I'm set up as a lefty. Setup was no problem, it just took a few extra minutes to make sure I reversed the parts pointed out in the document.

Space: It is compact, but not tiny. It is not a sprawling, larger than life acoustic kit, if that's what you're looking for. Obviously, it cannot be, for a number of reasons. It is small enough to fit in the corner of most rooms quite comfortably, and depending on how you place the pads, you can probably fold it up with ease and fit it into smaller spaces within two minutes. The full kit takes up less than 5 feet by 3 feet worth of space. I really can't get over the quality of the drum pedal included in this kit, at least for my needs. It's very responsive. To customize the sounds of individual drums and cymbals in a kit, you can use the sound module's editing functions to adjust parameters such as pitch, tone, and volume. You can also assign different sounds to each drum and cymbal pad, allowing you to create custom drum kits that suit your playing style and preferences. Are you able to customize the tones and sounds of individual drums/cymbals in a kit? Can you make your own custom user kits? The cymbals I think could be quieter as you hit them, possibly with softly rubber? Besides the exterior thud noise of the cymbals, they’re good. The sensitivity for the bell and rim sections could be a bit better, a couple times I mean to hit the rim but it comes out as a bell sound.This is not a perfect set by any means: the drum module's #6 set has a typo (Old Shcool, maybe that's intentional, a pun on cool?), the high hat rubber doesn't provide enough rebound for 1/16 note beats, the high hat pedal has to be fully released to get a good open high-hat sound, some of the drum sets are very low volume with the headphones connected to the module (to the point that I can hear myself hitting the pads more than the drum sound), and the snare pad doesn't have great rebound. Again, it’s important to remember just how cheap this kit is when trying to look at things objectively. There wasn’t a huge dynamic range to them, but the fact that they didn’t sound like a MIDI kit is what is most impressive. Modular nature: Each pad can be moved and installed wherever the user wishes. Strangely, I like my hi-hat where the snare usually would be, and vice versa. With that in mind, I was able to place both of those where I want them, and that's prohibitively difficult on acoustic kits. There is a minor complain about how far this modular setup goes, but that's in the next section. In all, this is a kit that you can fully personalize on the hardware level, by changing where pads are located and how they're arranged.

The feel was another huge plus for this kit. They had true mesh heads, and the rebound was really authentic feeling. Incredibly, the heads could even be tuned, which let us adjust how taught they were. At the level that these drums are aimed at, it’s quite unnecessary, but still a nice bit of attention to detail. Hi-hat, and hi-hat control is great! It sounds and feels good, with a more expressive open-hat then the Alesis Nitro Mesh. The DED-200 PRO features a built-in sound module that includes over 450 high-quality drum and percussion sounds, as well as the ability to import your own sounds via USB. The sound module also includes a variety of preset drum kits, which you can customize to your liking. The sounds of the drums are good.. enough. Of course not professional sounding, but you can get some good beats out of a couple of the 16 presets. Electronic drum kits have come a long way since musicians first started pairing synthesizers to rubber drum pads in the early ’80s. Today, the best mesh heads can be calibrated to feel just like their acoustic counterparts, and they are equipped with multiple sensors that can react to the slightest changes in pressure. Those sensors feed data to modules that can be loaded with thousands of drum sounds or samples, giving musicians access to almost unlimited kit configurations. And best of all, those sounds can be fed through a pair of headphones, making electronic drum kits a great choice for beginning drummers (and those who share a house with them).

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

I've been able to demo both of these e-kits! The Donner DED-80 and DED-200 are both affordable electronic drum kits that provide a variety of useful options and are fun to play! I am impressed at the number of features Donner has included in their line of electronic drumsets. The pads had mesh heads, which is truly remarkable at this price point, and like everything else, they were easy to assemble. It also came with hi-hat, crash, and ride cymbals, each with a soft touch rubber strike pad, and a rounded mount for a more realistic feel. On the other hand, rubber is still a great material for electronic cymbals. Good ones will have sensors on the bottom as well as the top to make them just as dynamic as the heads. They’ll be able to tell whether you’re playing the bow, bell or rim and you’ll even be able to “choke” them with your hand, just as you would with acoustic cymbals. Yes, the Donner DED-200 PRO electronic drum set allows you to customize the tones and sounds of individual drums and cymbals in a kit, and you can create your own custom user kits. Getting the control unit hooked up was also a straight forward affair. Each of the cables from the drums and cymbals to the brain was well labeled, and fit tightly to avoid being shaken loose through heavy use.