Afternoon all!
My name's Rob and I'm about to purchase a DM10 X Mesh kit (on order, collecting on Friday) but, before I do, I thought I'd ask a few questions of the learned masses here, just to set my mind at rest.
First off, I've been a drummer now for nigh on 35 years. I've played in numerous bands, mostly local, pub and club affairs, most certainly nothing of any note
In the early 90s, after getting married and buying my first house, my (now-ex) wife persuaded me to sell my kit as I was on an unforced hiatus and so I parted with my beloved Tama Swingstar, Paiste metal and beloved Roto-Toms. As we neared the turn of the century, my step-grandfather passed away and left me some money. I'd been itching to start playing again and my marriage was on a downward spiral so I decided to invest in eletronic drums for a number of reasons. By this time, I had built a small home-studio and felt an electronic kit would fit in better from a MIDI perspective, and I just felt that eDrums would give me better value for money. So I invested in a Yamaha DTXpress as a starting point and found a band looking for a drummer. We gigged a lot and the DTXpress held up pretty well. After some years, and some pretty awful lead singer ego/band politics crap, I left and the drums once again started gathering dust, being pulled out every now and again just to blow the cobwebs off, both literally and figuratively.
In the mean time, I went back to my small studio and actually ended up doing some freelance work for Alesis and Akai, including working with Steve Howell, the guy who originally assembled the DM10's library. I still have my prototype DM10 module here, although it has developed a fault that means it is silent
We worked on the Fusion workstation too (I programmed a lot of the internal drum patterns), as well as Akai rack samplers and MPC's. During this time, I decided to buy a DM10 kit, back when they first introduced the Real Heads. Sadly, just as I was about to pull the trigger, my car developed some serious faults and all the money I had saved was spent on putting that right.
So now I find myself in the market again, as my DTXpress is too long in the tooth to do what I need, and I have the chance to rejoin an old band and go gigging again. And the DM10 X Mesh seems to be the best option, particularly from a cost perspective when compared to V-Drums.
What I wanted to know, having read through some of the posts here, is if I am getting into something that is worthwhile as far as the gear is concerned. From a hardware perspective, the kit looks solid and well specified, and the DM10 module has some reasonable kits in there, but is it all about to become obsolete with the advent of the Strike kit, even though it looks like the Roland law suit is holding that up? It's also considerably more money.
My plan is to buy the X Mesh kit and add the Pro-X hats a little further down the line. I've looked into additional kit libraries and can only find the now-deleted Blue Jay, which is disappointing. Are there any other 3rd party libraries out there? Also, is it possible to build your own kit from your own samples? I have a huge amount of samples from my days working with Steve that I could use, but can't find a way of building my own kits to upload. Sadly, Steve passed away a couple of years ago and I'm sure he had a kit assembly tool, but it is lost and even if I had it, it probably wouldn't work on the latest OS's
I also plan to use my old DTXpress kit to augment the DM10 X, using the drum and cymbal pads as percussion triggers, possibly using the DTXpress brain for some sounds too. All of this will be fed into a mixer for live work. I'm happy to use a laptop and/or iPad (I have an Alesis iO Dock that could be employed for this) but I'd rather keep that to a minimum. I used to hook my DTXpress up to my Akai S6000 sampler to increase my sound library. It's a hefty beast, but solid as a rock.
I guess all I am looking for is opinions on whether I'm making a sound investment at this time. I figure that I can upgrade the DM10 module should the Strike module finally surface.
All reasoned comments are welcome and I thank you in advance for your assistance.