I think I'm closer to buying the DTXpress now...
1999-12-05 by bkadrie@xxxxx.xxx
Hello all, Thanks so much for posting the great information on scallability of the DTXpress! . The responses I got helped me to go in to my local music store with plenty of good questions to ask the sales associate. Here's what I found out: I think I was a bit lucky in that the sales guy that showed me the kit indicated that he's been a long time e-kit drummer, and that after playing on the kit for awhile, that he was planning on buying the DTXpress. (He also has had some good hands-on with the Roland Trap Electronic Drum Set and he found them severely lacking in feature in comparison to the DTXpress. Like has been said here, the DTXpress comes with 8 stereo inputs (plus the 9/10 input), and using spliters, you could go to 16 mono triggers. Looked the inputs were standard headphone plugs. So hopefully the cables will be easily available. I asked the salesman about switching out pads for other models, and he was nice enough to grab a demo Pinetech e-snare (looked and played a lot like the Roland Vpads) and let me play on it a bit. Sounded great, with a much better feel than the standard Yamaha e-pads. (but that's to be expected.) The nice thing was that he just simply unplugged the Yamaha pad and plugged in the Pinetech snare. From what I've heard here, I could have tweaked the sound of the snare if I had wanted to, but as a quick try, I was very impressed. I also found the headphone sound to be pretty mutted. I was really suprised that I had as difficult a time hearing the drum pads. In a live situation I could understand it, but with little to no noise around, they were pretty quiet. But, a nice stereo or boom-box should correct that. (I'm not planning on using the kit in a live situation. So, it looks like I will probably buy the set, and also add a nice e-snare (possibly the Pinetech one I demo'd) and use the extra pad as a cymbol. The salesman had said that he had tried making his own e-pads, but found them to be pretty non-sensitive. I think I'll still give the home-made pads a try though. I also went looking at my local Radio Shack for the splitter cables...didn't have much luck. As I'm not very literate in things electric, could someone tell me exactly what kind of cable I'd be looking for to split the sterio input to 2 mono cables? (maybe I answered my own question?!) Anyone had any luck on pricing out the various costs of buying the pads or the DTXpress brian seperately. One of the music stores I went to, they said they couldn't split the units. (hmm, is that a bs answer?). The prices I saw for other e-pads for sale (Roland, Pinetech) all seemed pretty cheap for what I thought they would be. (around $80 for them.) Lastly, any good internet links for more info on other pads? Thanks again everyone! Brett Kadrie (one last thing, I believe the word wrap problem is happening if you reply on the Onelist web page, I'm doing it now and as an experiement, I'm trying to limit the length of my lines to see if that corrects the problem! If not, sorry :(