Just an update as to the Alesis Warranty service. I contacted them again to explain the issues I'm having. They were quite responsive this time around, so that's progress. The first time this happened, I didn't hear from them, but Inmusic sent me two 12" pads, unsolicited (but quite welcome). This time I received an email from them and an offer to send me two more pads as replacements. I went into detail about the issues I'm experiencing, and asked some questions about repairing them myself or if there was anything I could do differently. Basically, they said they just send out new ones and don't have defective units returned for repair. Here's the quoted text from our discussion:
"There is no information on how to service theses pads which is why we replace them and don’t often request that customers send them back to us. If they go, they need to be replaced. If you wish to try to fix them by all means go for it, but it isn’t something we recommend trying to do. I’m submitting a replacement for 2 x 12” pads that should be arriving in the next 5 – 7 business days. Hopefully these aren’t defective since as you can see, the other drum pads work just fine."
Okay. It's a weird business model, but at least it's skewed towards the consumer. Since I've delved into trying to make a more robust system, this benefits me by having a bunch of 12" carcasses for experimentation. Eventually I'll have a set that will require an expansion module for all the (hopefully) working pads!
While this is in not the most ideal way to enter the world of Alesis and e-drums, I'll take it. Eventually I'll have some sort of system in place to retrofit Alesis mesh pads with a trigger system that can withstand repeated hits.
So, all in all, jelly-side up. My time and labor has been a bit of an issue, but I feel that in the end I'll have a better grasp of these systems.
Oh, and I inquired about how the Strike pads were built, and if they had similar problems. He couldn't answer that, but did offer to sell me individual pads as replacements. I'm guessing the trigger components are all similar (as are almost all of them), so it would be a matter of how they are mounted and if they are subjected to the same forces that plague my DM10 MKII Pro pads. For those keeping score, that's six pads that have had broken wires/solder joints (over two separate kits). I'm pretty sure that's a design flaw on this particular pad model, as I don't hear about any of the other DM10 family having these issues with such frequency.