Author Topic: New Alesis Drum Module "Crimson" with New Kit that has red pads with mesh heads?  (Read 21331 times)

I am new here, I found your forum searching for info on the this set. I walked into a Guitar Center in on Thursday to look at the Rolands and Yamahas and found this Crimson set on display. The set looked awesome, with the big darker red shells, the slick module, it made the others look cheap and toy like. The sales rep was recommending a well used floor model Yamaha DTX542K and told me to stay away from Alesis products, but I found this Alesis to be best looking electronic set I have seen. If anyone has questions about it, I plan on taking another look at it this weekend. For a casual at home play kit, would this model be a mistake?

Online Hellfire

I am new here, I found your forum searching for info on the this set. I walked into a Guitar Center in on Thursday to look at the Rolands and Yamahas and found this Crimson set on display. The set looked awesome, with the big darker red shells, the slick module, it made the others look cheap and toy like. The sales rep was recommending a well used floor model Yamaha DTX542K and told me to stay away from Alesis products, but I found this Alesis to be best looking electronic set I have seen. If anyone has questions about it, I plan on taking another look at it this weekend. For a casual at home play kit, would this model be a mistake?

I'm not sure how anyone can say anything about the Crimson kit at this point (good or bad as far as performance or build quality). It's only been on the market for a week or so. If you really want this kit, I would go back to Guitar Center and sit down and play around with it. If you decide to buy it, I sure Guitar Center has some kind of return policy if the need arises that the kit doesn't fit your needs.

So.. who is going to take the plunge for the good of the group?   ;)   I noticed on Alesis' new products page, they do not list the module alone as a standalone option (the same thing they did regarding the DM8 module).   Hopefully, they will wise up and do so.  If the sampling features are any good, lots of drummers will want to add this module to their existing setups.  I would love to try one out for a week to test the limits, but with the holiday's fast approaching, I will not have an extra grand laying around.  :(   
Alesis Products DM10,DM8,TriggerIO,JamDock,DMPhones,Elevate3ActiveMonitors, Presonus AudioBox 22VSL,Roland Blue MDS10 Rack,Roland Pads:3xPD100 custom dual zone,1xPD120,3xPDX8,2xKD8,2xRare Roland BD Pedals,2xRolandHiHatPedals,Numerous Roland\Alesis Cymbals,Numerous Roland\Gibraltar Clamps.

Offline rhysT

FYI, this link lists the Crimson module as a separate part: http://www.noterepeat.com/products/alesis/electronic-percussion/crimson-mesh-kit/699-alesis-crimson-mesh-kit-frequently-asked-questions 

As stated in the Crimson User guide Specs, it's limited to 16MB (total) of user-loaded samples, so it's prob'ly worth waiting to check out the 2box Drumit-3 module.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2015, 05:57:28 AM by rhysT »

Offline ClaudioCas

16Mb for a sample is an huge size. A sample is a sound of a kit, not the full kit. There is no specified limit for kit (probably the size of your usb device).
The issue can be if the samples cannot be combine as multilayer: the sound of your snare for example is different if you do a hard or soft strike. If you can use only a sample per pad, the feature will be unuseful at all due unnatural sound and felling that will reproduce (like the difference btw a dm6 and a dm8/dm10 that has multilayer and dynamic articulation).

I think I seen that the Crimson module supports all the way up to a 64GB flash drive.   I wonder how fast or slow the process will be to upload an entire custom kit with custom .wav files from the flash drive...?  You could probably make use of a bunch of old 1GB flash drives and keep the kits and sounds separated on different drives.  Then just swap them out as needed for completely different kits\sounds..  But if the custom sounds aren't going to have ability for Dynamic Articulation (say 10 different levels of sound for each drum) then I am not sure how useful it is going to be.    Also wanted to mention (i may have missed this in the previous posts) the new Crimson mesh pads have a "tuning" dial (like some of the Yamahas)...
Alesis Products DM10,DM8,TriggerIO,JamDock,DMPhones,Elevate3ActiveMonitors, Presonus AudioBox 22VSL,Roland Blue MDS10 Rack,Roland Pads:3xPD100 custom dual zone,1xPD120,3xPDX8,2xKD8,2xRare Roland BD Pedals,2xRolandHiHatPedals,Numerous Roland\Alesis Cymbals,Numerous Roland\Gibraltar Clamps.

Offline rhysT

16Mb for a sample is an huge size. A sample is a sound of a kit, not the full kit. There is no specified limit for kit (probably the size of your usb device).

Good luck trying to play samples directly from a USB device as the Crimson User kits may only be able to access up to 16GB of user-loaded samples at a time.
So I'd expect the 20 available User kits will mainly be using the preset sounds/voices, and there's no mention of voice/sample layering in the User guide.

Offline Khes74

The only real differences between the crimson and the Dm10 were the rack and pads. Everything else was the same. The knobs are actually for sensitivity, some Pintech pads have the same feature. The Yamaha pad knobs are for tuning not sensitivity.

The drum pads are just the mesh head pads, I didn't like the feel of them personally. I'm more so curious to see how the mesh heads feel without half a dozen contact points.

The rack is nothing special, just different style clamps mostly.

I am new here, I found your forum searching for info on the this set. I walked into a Guitar Center in on Thursday to look at the Rolands and Yamahas and found this Crimson set on display. The set looked awesome, with the big darker red shells, the slick module, it made the others look cheap and toy like. The sales rep was recommending a well used floor model Yamaha DTX542K and told me to stay away from Alesis products, but I found this Alesis to be best looking electronic set I have seen. If anyone has questions about it, I plan on taking another look at it this weekend. For a casual at home play kit, would this model be a mistake?

I am in the same situation.  Over the weekend, I played the Crimson at a local Guitar Center and, with my albeit limited knowledge about ekit products, think it would be a good addition to for my home studio and a solid product to learn the basics of drumming.

I am hoping to read some reviews in the near future about the Crimson.


I really dislike the thought of being a curmudgeon in the face of potentially good news, but I must face facts. However, as a good skeptic and critical thinker I'm willing and able to change my beliefs based on better physical evidence.

I still see the familiar (and detestable) "RealHat" pedal. If Alesis frequents these forums and takes its pulse on occasion, they would likely be mindful of the universal disdain for this particular foot controller and all its flaws. So it's unlikely an evolved rendition of it came to market without a single cosmetic differentiation.

Red shells?... A paint can negates that wonderment.

Can I volunteer to be their in-house R&D drummer? Alesis occasionally makes some great equipment, but to repackage previously proven lame components and expect them to play nicely together is wishful thinking. Granted everyone here is on a tight budget or we'd be playing Rolands and wouldn't be reading this. And that is all the more reason Alesis should be capitalizing on coupling existing building blocks with excellent programming. Anyone can repackage and re-brand, but to re-think takes a little work. It does pay off though.

How many threads, forums and energies are dedicated to reworking and fixing things that were immediately obvious to even a new user? Pretty Photoshops and slick marketing are used by all, but a happy user base can't be replicated by artificial means in this day and age. I own a DM10 Studio kit and, though I'm going the re-engineering route to correct for its inadequacies, I'm glad to have it. I do regret buying it though. When I calculate the hours spent doing Alesis' job engineering (and it's still not adequate) I could have bought a Roland for minimum wage.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not here to knock or promote any manufacturer. But there is a demarcation line between those who listen to their users and those who don't. And I can't help but wonder why a company plagued with bad reviews doesn't see the need to get their act together. As a product engineer myself the first thing I would do is SERIOUSLY LISTEN and address the complaints way-before re-issuing the same stuff with a cool new color.

Sadly, I used to like Alesis products but now skip over them whenever I see the Alesis brand. I don't like feeling that way and really hope they put a little more energy into design integration at some point. But all evidence points to the contrary, and a good skeptic looks at the evidence.

Respectfully,
Brian Jackson

Offline Guinness

Hey all.

How did they get away with using Mesh heads?

Offline rhysT

The other Alesis forum has a relevant topic about the Crimson hihat control not producing mid-range sounds: http://community.alesis.com/alesis/topics/hi-hat-only-works-full-open-or-closed

I assume the DM10 Mk-II kits may have a similar hihat limitation just using the module's sounds.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2017, 08:52:46 AM by rhysT »

Offline Failed Muso

I still see the familiar (and detestable) "RealHat" pedal. If Alesis frequents these forums and takes its pulse on occasion, they would likely be mindful of the universal disdain for this particular foot controller and all its flaws. So it's unlikely an evolved rendition of it came to market without a single cosmetic differentiation.

The other Alesis forum has a relevant topic about the Crimson hihat control not producing mid-range sounds: http://community.alesis.com/alesis/topics/hi-hat-only-works-full-open-or-closed

I assume the DM10 Mk-II kits may have a similar hihat limitation just using the module's sounds.

I think I posted this elsewhere but I may as well double up here.

The Crimson comes with the RealHat pedal as standard (at least, it does here in the UK). This pedal is capable of continuous messages that are required for variable hi-hat sounds. However, the Crimson module itself does not support this. What it DOES do is pass the continuous messaging thru MIDI so that if you hook up your Crimson kit to a computer running something like SD2 or similar, it will respond to the continuous messaging and deliver sounds in between open and closed.

This also means that you can connect a Pro-X hi-hat to the Crimson and it will function correctly ONLY if connected to a module or plug-in that responds to continuous messaging. Otherwise, you're only going to get open, closed and chick.

I find it odd that Alesis supply the more advanced controller and yet the module isn't capable of fully supporting it. It's like they had a meeting and someone said, "Hey, what can we do to annoy and alienate our customers just a little bit more? I know! Let's give them a superior hi-hat pedal but make it redundant by not having the module support all its features!" ;)

To make things worse, the website states that you only get the DM pedal with the Crimson kit!
Alesis Crimson Mesh Kit, Alesis DM10 Module, Alesis PercPad, Yamaha DTXpress Kit, Mattel Synsonics, Toontrack Superior Drummer 2