Well, I know there are a lot of mixed reviews on the Alesis Pro X, mostly frustration.. I was so excited to get it when it came out.. put it off, read people's stories about disappointment.. soon enough it jumped from 99 bucks to 129 so I basically gave up on the thought. Then I began jamming at a friends, and we built up a second Alesis DM10X kit with some of the extra toms I had.. bought a Roland frame used, a couple of older DM7 crashes, I had a spare module and the kick.. only thing it was missing was hi-hat and pedal.
So I decided I'd try out the Pro X on my home set and bring over the original RealHat and pedal once mine was in. It arrived this weekend and last night I finally went in and did the replacement. I'd found a great deal on a Network stand, it's pristine and I think I paid 40 bucks from a used sale. I wanted to see if the original hi-hat pad would fit as the top unit but the hole to mount the clutch through is too small and I'm not about to drill it so unless there are smaller clutch bolts out there.. I'm stuck with the pair of hats that came with the unit. Also had to fit it in with the double kick pedal.. the hat stand legs do swivel, but it'll take some getting used to the positioning and it would have been nice if it was one of those two legged models.. but hey, 40 bucks.
Yes, the rubber on this top hat is not as soft, it's definitely louder (but I've got the wife's four teens with us now, they make a crapload of noise, the place is always nuts, the wife at work a lot, so I'm not so worried about the tapping sound anymore..lol). It's a smaller hat compared to the DM10X one.. but it does have the benefit of giving slightly more responsive bounce because the surface is harder so finessing it with 16s etc seems a bit easier. Calibrating after the module update was not a problem, although even though I thought I traced the cables back as I plugged them in, I still managed to mix up the two and at first it failed because I had the top and bottom inputs reversed! Doh! But after that I started testing it out and you know what? It actually worked pretty darned good. It has a slightly different timing you have to get used to for the barking. But I'm sure that'll come, just as I had to get used to lifting the pedal a millisecond before hitting the hat when I first started playing the ekit. The chick was working fairly well. I did toy with the open and closed settings after calibration to see what worked well. Funny, the first calibration gave me 99 for open and 0 for closed.. but it worked. Then I tried various others and ended up with 40 open and 20 closed which seems to give me a really nice pronounced chick. And still at least 4 different levels as I open the pedal. I do have to get used to the spring (tightness) of the hi-hat stand (and see if it's adjustable.. it's a little stiff so it's hard to stay steady on partly closed or partly opened).
But so far so good. Now, I use Addictive Drums 2 most of the time and I only had half an hour or so to test it out. I was actually happier with how it sounded directly from the module compared to the VST. But it was still pretty dammed cool. The chick wasn't as pronounced in a lot of the sets.. some of the kits it sounds much better than others.. again, I need to make the fine adjustments and I'm no where near knowledgable yet with making those in AD2 but I'm confident I can make it better. It was still fun to be playing my kit and feeling as if it's more like an acoustic setup as opposed to an electronic kit, look and feel wise.
It took me a month or so to get used to the feel and action of the RealHat pedal when I first got my DM10X, so I assume it'll take a few weeks to get used to the feel of an actual hi-hat stand and to adjust my timing and how I play. The top hat will feel different, con is it's louder and a bit smaller, pro is it had nice bounce on top and playing the edge seems fine.. I think just the fact that the set looks more like a real acoustic kit and the hats actually move like a real hi-hat will make my playing experience more satisfying (I also have a Laurin snare and kick that are super reactive). I didn't crank the volume or use the noise cancelling so the hi-hat did make an audible enough sound level but hopefully will fade away somewhat when I'm really going to town. And at least I don't have to buy another hi-hat for my other setup at buddy's.. just bring over the original hat and pedal.
Will attach a couple of pics and keep y'all posted on my progress and/or frustration
