Well, it was bound to happen. I read all the reviews that indicated a less-than-stellar build quality from Alesis. But I couldn't swing $5000 for a similarly outfitted Roland/Yamaha kit. So I crossed my fingers and picked up a DM10 MKII Pro. Mesh heads. It has four toms, which is more than I use on an acoustic set, but in the end it was useful, since my snare began to fail about a week ago (two is one and one is none). It got very muted, like it had a pillow stuffed into it. I took the head off and saw that two of the foam cones had fallen off, but nothing else was apparently wrong. The whole drum had significant dead zones, and only hitting right in the middle of the head-exactly- would produce any sound. Ghost notes were all but impossible.
So, I moved the second floor tom to the snare position. It worked fine. For about four days. I took that head off and all the cones, save for one outer cone, had become stuck on one side of the shell. Odd, and indicative of really shitty adhesive, but that wasn't the problem. The center trigger is totally unresponsive. Dead. The outer trigger (for rim shots) still fires, but that's not totally useful. I have every confidence that this fate will eventually move to the other drums, as I can't see how they are broken, or what I did to hasten their demise. I'd never play these live with this kind of uncertainty. I have contacted Alesis with a warranty issue, and will report back with the results. I have included a picture of the second snare with the cones gathered, like sheep hiding from the rain, on the side of the shell. Top notch build quality (not). At least super glue is cheap. Oh, and the other picture shows the thin plastic strip that is broken, connecting the large plastic rings that are attached to the foam rings. I assume this decreases the ability of the trigger to pick up nuanced hits.
Also, I'm no John Bonham. I do NOT hit these things all that hard. You'd think that a company that makes things that people hit with sticks would be slightly more robust. Or maybe I just have a faulty set.