Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

For whatever reason, I felt compelled to add my 2 cents in here...

Having learned many, many years ago, the first thing the (high 
school) band director said was to get one of those (now) funny 
looking practice pads (the block of wood that is slanted, with a 
rubber pad on top) and learn to get a controlled rebound.  Now that 
I think of it, that's not too far off from the e-drums of the 
present, other than the amount/variety of sound you can make with 
the electronics. 

Of course we played the real snares, and as others have said, played 
on everything that you could bounce a stick on (and some that didn't 
bounce).  But anyone that has done drum corp knows, a field snare 
doesn't feel like a concert snare, which doesn't feel like a mesh 
head, which doesn't feel like a rubber pad, etc.  

So I try and tell my son, who is just beginning to get serious about 
percussion after 3 years of elementary school band, to concentrate 
on finger and stick control, learn to read music, and spend equal, 
if not more time, on the melodic percussion (bells, xylophone).