Just saw this from an article on MusicRadar.
http://www.musicradar.com/news/drums/namm-2016-alesis-takes-strike-action-with-groundbreaking-new-electronic-drum-kits-633602
NAMM 2016: Alesis is expanding its roster of electronic drum kits with the Strike range, which the company says contains "the first-ever electronic kits to deliver the very best of both acoustic drums and electronic drums in terms of feel, playability, looks, sound quality and control."
I'm not impressed for the most part so far. The only parts I'm really interested in are the kick drum, cymbals and module. I do find the following claim to be bullshit but from what I understand now , it seems I misunderstood what Alesis was trying to say.
"the first-ever electronic kits to deliver the very best of both acoustic drums and electronic drums in terms of feel, playability, looks, sound quality and control."
Acoustic Properties- It seems like they plan on using these as acoustics in part, however each pad size while varying in diameter all seem to have the same depth. So it could function as a travel kit I suppose, nothing to record with though or to play live with.
Feel- I've tried Alesis mesh head pads before and they feel hard, never really liked them. Granted I have never tried the mesh heads alone without cones touching them. As for cymbals, I honestly don't know if they are metal or rubber. The pad sizes seem to be 14" snare, 14" kick drum, 10" 12" rack toms and another 12" or 13" floor tom. I would expect at-least a 14" floor tom, the rest of the sizes minus the kick and floor tom are fine though. I would like to see the kick being at-least 18". I think they are rubber since metal cymbals are much thinner. That being said, it doesn't mean they are bad cymbals, infact this is one of the parts that intrigue me the most, however brass electronic cymbals are the best feeling electronic cymbals period followed closely my Roland(IMO)
Playability I can't judge this except with the mesh head pads which was covered above.
Looks The only way this looks acoustic is by the wooden shells and maybe so with the metal cymbals. The shells are only probably about 5" deep though. The crashes appear to be 16" the hi-hat 13" or 14" and the ride 18". Not bad sizes but I really would like to see a 20" ride and 18" crash for both feel and look, AND a splash and china.
sound quality I doubt Alesis modules will contain the sounds able to rival VSTi plugins such as SD2 or BFD3, no module on the market can, the closest being 2box.
control Not quite sure what they mean by this. Control of feel? Control of positioning? Control of Sound? This could mean many things.
I am most curious about the module you can find posts about what people think the next big Alesis module have in detail somewhere on the fourm.
Even if the module can can load samples, how many samples can they load? Will it be enough to load VSTi samples? The Yamaha Dtx502 can import samples but not enough for a drumkit.