Hi there folks. Hope you can advise! (new to edrums!).
We are looking for an intermediate kit for my sons birthday, (he's 13). He's been playing on a beginner acoustic kit for a while and doing well. We'd love to upgrade him to an intermediate kit and both the DM10 Studio (Mesh head) and Crimson kits look attractive. We love the look & feel of the Crimson. However, the DM10 with the extra mesh elements and extra toms / cymbals looks great. The downside is that we love the fact that you can upload your own samples to the Crimson kit. If we bought the DM10 We could at a later date buy an extra sample pad to fill that gap. I guess my question is, is the DM10 better than the Crimson in terms of spec etc.? It is a little older but sounds great to my ears. Any advice would be great. Thank you!!
I have both modules and whilst the DM10 is the more detailed and powerful of the two, the Crimson is perfectly good for the beginner/intermediate drummer. Don't forget that the DM10 line has been discontinued to make way for the forthcoming Strike range. This typically means a cessation of development, not that the DM10 is in any dire need of any fixes, but is worth bearing in mind.
As you rightly point out, the extra pads of the DM10 kits are very nice to have, but extra pads can be added to the Crimson too, should you wish, albeit only two. I wanted the DM10 X mesh kit, but left my purchase too late and they're no longer available new, so ended up getting the Crimson. I have since added an Alesis PercPad to the rack, as well as augmenting the kit with various other pads from older kits I had lying around. I am currently incorporating the DM10 module into this set up, to give me more inputs and to be able to trigger its sounds via MIDI from the Crimson module. However, I have fallen in love with Toontrack's Superior Drummer software and actually use that more than I do the Crimson or DM10 modules. That might be an avenue you want to explore.
Bottom line is, the DM10 is better specified in terms of the number of pads and the module itself but is now a discontinued line so whilst that might yield some bargain purchases, it won't be a product that will develop and expand any more. If this isn't an issue, I'd plump for the DM10. Regarding the upload and use of samples in the Crimson, this isn't a feature I use, or even see myself using. You can't upload multi-sampled drums, just single samples, so is only really useful for FX and things like loops or one shot samples. However, the USB port also allows you to save kits to a stick, so that might be more useful.
Hope that helps?