Drummers of Singletrack

I’m a very novice drummer but looking to improve. I have a crappy ekit at home (Alesis DM6, but with a Roland mesh snare). It’s unreliable and bad to play. I keep having to replace the piezos on the cymbals.

At work I have an old Pearl forum acoustic kit. It’s pretty ropey, but infinitely nicer to play. This was bought for our work band for which I’m the bass player.

I need to upgrade my setup at home….

Do I spend lots on a half decent ekit, or do I go another route…

Acoustic kits seem way cheaper. How much quieter are these new mesh heads and low volume cymbals? Whilst I live in a nice detached house, it’s not fair to burden my family with the volume of a full acoustic kit.

So, new Ekit Vs low volume acoustic?

If I’m going to have a kit that doesn’t look, sound or feel like a traditional kit then I want it to have 200 silly noises and be able to plug headphones in.

Having said that, my electric kit has sat unused for months and really needs to find its way to eBay.

Low volume acoustic kits are still not that quiet in my experience and mesh heads feel very different to regular heads. If you have no neighbours or a soundproof space I’d go for a full fat kit.

I have access to a standard kit at the big band myself and my wife play in, as well as a Yamaha Stage Custom kit for gigs but I can’t play it at home due to the volume so I bought one of those DW pad kits for practice.

A nice electric kit like a Roland TD-11 can be had on eBay for not crazy money so that’s probably where I’d be headed.

For home use I’d go electronic – as much as you can afford to spend. Then consider that it’s going to become a clothes horse anyway

I bought a Alesis Nitro Mesh kit and then later on a set of Millennium low volume cymbals and some hardware to attach them to the Alesis frame. I also bought a cheap PA system and play through that matched to the same natural volume of the cymbals.

Having proper cymbals and not having to use headphones made a big difference for me. The electric cymbals I just have set as cow bells now.

Thanks for the replies. It’s going to be a tricky one. Just got back from playing my acoustic set at work and it’s much nicer. Maybe I should just go into the office more?

Without spending a decent amount electric drums are not great. I’ve got an Alesis crimson, and it’s Ok. Certainly not good enough to use live, or even to learn on I don’t think but I’ve been playing for years and it’s fine for learning covers and a bit of practice.

If I had the cash I’d get a Roland TD50, but that’s getting on for e-bike money

Get a Roland kit and be grateful for it’s reliability. I bought a second hand td-11kv around 5 years ago for £500, it’ll easily still sell for that now and the only issue is the hi-hat symbal isn’t in good condition. I now use it as a crash though as I upgraded to a proper hi-hat stand with the Roland fancy hi hat.

For home use it’s perfect. Still not quiet but with good quality headphones it’s so easy to jump on and no deafen your family. I haven’t played an acoustic kit for 18 months but I’d be confident that everything I can play now I could play on an acoustic kit after a little adjustment.

The biggest difference is the feel and volume between the 2 kits. If you have access to the acoustic kit regularly then play it as much as you can, but the e-kit will allow learning almost whenever you want.

Go Roland, eBay will have you covered.

Acoustic kits, while often beautiful to look at and play, always sound terrible at home. Just too noisy. At least with an e kit, you can make it sound good and at a reasonable volume. I can’t imagine the low volume heads and cymbals you can get now sound any good either.
If I had time, space and money, I’d get some sort of Roland kit for the house.

Another alternative is, are there any practice rooms nearby? Don’t have a kit at home, practice at full volume on the practice room kit. OK, its not as convenient, but it takes away a lot of problems. I know a gigging drummer who does it this way.

Where do you work that has a kit set up you can just muck about on and are there any jobs going?

Your question depends what you want to be doing with yr drumming. Want to get good at playing (and tuning) an acoustic kit? Don’t buy electric. Want convenience? Pick another instrument (not harp or upright bass) or hobby.

Update. I got a Roland TD17kv2 ekit. So essentially the quite expensive ekit route. Certainly the right decision and I’ve been playing it loads. It’s so much better than my old Alesis thing. @wordnumb I work for Intel but in a pretty small office, but with lots of space on the ground floor with few folk around. My boss (site lead) is very cool about this sort of thing. It’s great to get different people together with the band and we play at work functions (captive audience!)

A good choice, I’ve got one of those clothes horses 😉

and two full fat acoustic kits. But I never use either of those at home. One lives at the rehearsal rooms, the other is for gigging

A little plea: I’m donating my old ekit to my wife’s primary school. Sadly, two of the Tom clamps are missing. These are surprisingly expensive even second hand. Do any kind drummers have any they could donate? Will pay postage. These are for an Alesis dm6, so standard 1.5″ rack and standard l rods. Nasty plasticy things are totally fine.

My daughter is interested in learning drums, so to try it out I just bought an Alesis DM5 Pro kit for £100 off Facebook.

Seems pretty decent, and definitely good enough for a 10 year old to bang about on.

I’ve rearranged the bits, as the previous owner had it set up very weirdly, and replaced cables with shorter/coloured ones from my studio spares box.

I’m a guitarist/bassist/keyboardist but always fancied learning the drums…

…and I just spent 2 hours happily playing about on it following some YouTube tutorials, and I’m already looking on eBay for a larger mesh snare to upgrade to….slippery slope ahead ?

Yes, slippery slope ahead.  See my story above. Started on a second hand kit, then upgraded to a nice Roland kit.  Playing loads, so have improved a lot. (Also really a guitarist and bassist, but competent enough on drums to now call myself a drummer)