Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Sorry I'm a bit late with this but I had the inlaws in this weekend and I
didn't have a lot of time to play.

I got my kit late Friday and I must say that I'm very impressed!
I've been playing a friends set of Vdrums for the past year or so and I can
honestly say that I'm happy to have the DTXpress instead of paying much
more money for the V's. For what I want to do, practice and record, this
kit will be more than adequate. I've only been playing with the DTXpress
for a couple of days and haven't gotten to every feature but here's
basically what I think.

What I like:

	1). The sounds. The module has a great variety of drum, cymbal and effect
sounds. I can't wait to start coming up with my own kits using the layering
feature. It'll be fun combining drum sounds with effects and GM voices. As
soon as someone figures out how to dump the custom kits to a computer file,
let us know.I'd love to hear (and play) with what you guys have come up
with. It's great to have the GM voices in the module. I downloaded some
jazz MIDI's from the internet and muted the drum track and played along
with them. Pretty cool.

	2). The cymbal pads. Unlike someone who posted earlier on this, I love the
pads for the cymbal pads.Vdrums come with hard rubber pads for the cymbals,
like our snare and tom pads, and I HATED them! There was no "give" like a
real cymbal. The Vdrums cymbal pads were dual-zone, though, and that's the
only thing I miss about them. I do have a problem with these cymbal pads in
that they sometimes rotate away from me while I'm playing them. I think
that could be fixed easily. Any ideas?

	3). The drum pads. I was happy to see that these weren't the rock-hard
rubber pads like I've got on my Roland Octapad. Still not nearly as nice as
the Vdrum mesh-head but not bad. 
	
	4). The price. For what you pay, this is an awesome set of drums! 


What I don't like:

	1). The "songs". These are bad. There are only one or two that I'm
actually interested in playing with. This really moot if you've got your
set wired to a computer, as you can download a MIDI file, mute the drums
and play along. You may even be able to store that song in one of the
presets, but I'm not sure about that. 

	2). Some of the preset kits. Why would you want a preset kit with a bunch
of loops assigned to the pads. I think they have this like this for
in-store demo purposes. That's the only thing I could think of. I could see
having a loop or two on a kit that you made up yourself, but not as a
unchangeable preset! More functional presets would've been nice. Again,
this is kinda moot because there are MANY spaces for you to create your own
sets. I've only done 3 so far but they're pretty cool. Whoever finds the
freeware or shareware utility we could use to transfer MIDI dumps, wins the
everlasting admiration of everyone on the list.

	3). Headphone level. WAY too low. I'm running through a mixer and using
the headphone jack from that. Maybe this is an "ear saving" thing but I
think that should be for me to decide.

	4). Ride cymbal volume. Do any of you have trouble hearing the ride
cymbal, even thought the volume level is cranked? Any ideas on how to fix
this? This could be operator error. I haven't had time to really troubleshoot.


	That's it for now. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say in the near
future. Bottom line - I've drummed for many years and I'm pretty picky
about stuff. I LOVE this kit. I highly recommend it for anyone looking into
edrums and is on a budget. You get a whole lot for what you pay for.

	Comments are encouraged.


		Chris