Manfred's E-drums

Introduction

This page is about my Roland TD8-KV electronic drum kit. I have been using this kit mainly for practice and recording: check out the sound samples . Also included is a description of my floating floor construction that I made to minimize contact sound towards my neighbors.Check out the photographs as well.
 

  

My experiences with the V-custom drums

I bought this kit in May 2000 from Eindhoven Musical Instruments . So far I have been very pleased with it. It's a great kit for a reasonable price.

The TD-8 drum module is compact, complete and offers me all the sounds that I need. Most of the time I use 'real' drum sounds. I do not use many of the weird or exotic samples. My most popular sound is the 'Rosewood' preset sound with a little more depth on the toms.

In my opinion, playing E-drums requires a different approach than playing acoustic drums. The V-custom has several restrictions that an acoustic drum set does not have and vice versa. This is for example applicable to the feel of the cymbal pads and the limitations of the triggering. Of course, this will always be true as long as one tries to emulate a real instrument. Even if emulation would be perfect, people would most likely still complain that the emulation still doesn't look like the real instrument. When you want 100% real drums, you are simply always better off buying the real thing!

All the sounds the TD-8 offers, including the cymbals, are quite realistic. The adjustment options for each instrument (depth, tuning, type of drumhead, muffling etc.) is very good. In the beginning I had some problems with the kick pad triggering while using the twin pedal. Sometimes it wouldn't trigger when playing fast double bass patterns. I was able to solve this by changing the trigger parameters (especially the mask time).

The mesh heads reduces the sound of the tom and snare pads enormously. These heads really feel like regular drum heads, but with a little more rebound. Sensitivity and dynamic range of the snare and tom sounds is quite good. Some of the tom sounds sound a bit too artificial for my taste. There are many snare drum sounds available in the TD-8, but only some of them give me what I look for in a snare drum.

The dynamic range of the cymbal sounds is quite good: you really get a different sound when you play louder, with more under/overtones. The cymbal sounds decay considerably faster than real cymbals, which is understandable considering a very large required sampling time versus limited available memory. Anyway, most of the time you will not notice this, definitely not with some other instruments around it.
The feel of the hihat and cymbal pads is the only true weakness of this kit. The PD7 cymbal pads are really too hard and inflexible. This requires quite a different approach than when playing a real cymbal. I have tried Roland's V-cymbals, but those are not satisfactory either to me.

Having only 1 or 2 triggering zones for each instrument can still be quite a restriction when emulating a cymbal or acoustic drum. For example, a ride cymbal can be emulated with a cymbal sound + cup sound in the rim, but playing a real ride cymbal, with many different sounds (depending on where you play it, how loud, from which angle, with wood or nylon tip, etc.) is quite a different experience. The same holds true for a snare drum: the PD80R is position sensitive and also has a separate rim sound that can for example trigger a rim shot or a click sound. A real snare however can do both. It can be played with snares off, you can do pitch bends with your elbow. All without having to change settings or choose a different instrument.
Of course, you can also do a lot with the V-custom kit that is simply impossible with acoustic drums. you can play 2 totally different instruments with the different trigger zones of each pad. You can do amazing things with the sound, choose a complete different set of instruments by pressing just one button. You will always get high quality sound. When playing in a band, your band members will even get a drummer with a volume button - how about that?

The difference in playing approach between E-drums and the V-custom drums is not only applicable to the feel of the pads, but also to the dimensions of the setup. The rather small size of the pads (8") was something I needed to get used to, especially on the snare. Moreover, the small pads allows everything to be set up a little bit closer. Fast changes between the small and compact pads are much easier. Acoustic drums often require a further reach.
 

Features

My E-drums consist of the following components:

I play in a left-handed setup. On the E-drums I prefer more light-weight sticks as compared to what I use on acoustic drums. I currently use the Balbex ultra jazz model with wood tip.
Note that I added a twinpedal. the new Vcymbals, (replacing the TD7 pads) and a Yamaha BP80 dual trigger pad to the original V-custom kit. The Phonic mixer allows me to easily mix the sound from the module with a CD player, tape, microphone or line input (e.g. from a guitar amplifier). Note that the TD-8 module also features a mix-in stereo input, which I currently do not use. As for the two CY-12 crashes, I use these together with two CY-8 pads on split inputs.

Lately I record the Vdrums in midi, and run it through the Toontrack superior drummer VST plugin.

Floating floor construction

For me, the main reason to purchase a set of E-drums was to be able to play whenever I feel like it without having to invest in a soundproof room for my acoustic drum kit (which I do not have the space for in my apartment anyway). The use of closed headphones on my Roland kit excludes the acoustic pad sounds from my own ears and gives me the sound and feel of a real drum kit, especially on the PD-80(R) tom and snare pads. Often, even an E-drummer needs to take into account his/her neighbors or house mates. Although the Roland kit can be played rather silently (especially with the mesh heads), contact sound leakage can still be considerable, especially from the bass drum. Without taking measures, this contact sound will directly go into the floor of your house/appartment where it can become a big annoyance to others.

In order to reduce contact sound as much as possible, I designed a floating floor construction for my E-drums, as shown below. I used rather simple materials that you can buy in any building materials store or that you may have laying around. The floor consists of a rigid multiplex floor board and shock-absorbing mattress + polystyrene foam underneath. Because of its rigidity, the floor board distributes the generated vibrations (mainly from the bassdrum pedal) evenly (without the construction, these cause the annoying contact sound). The vibrations are then absorbed by the shock-absorbing material underneath. The multiplex floor board offers enough rigidity to support drum kit and player. The carpet and rubber ring door-mats offer additional shock absorption and anti slip, especially for the kick pad and hihat controller pedal. The pedals can be easily fixed to the construction with wood screws. The entire construction measures 120 cm by 120 cm. The sides have been decorated with vinyl (matching the concrete floor covering) to hide the mattress and polystyrene foam.

schematic of my floating floor construction.	Front view
matress and polystyrene foam. Rubber ring doormats are on top.	Top view
detail of mattress and multiplex floor board.	Side view

Other 'floating floor hobbyists' told me they had used car tyres or rock wool as an alternative for the mattress. This might also work, but I haven't tried it myself - I had this old mattress laying around anyway.

 

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