ROLAND'S VERSATILE LINE of electronic V-Drum sets has left lots of drummers drooling with desire. But for many gigging musicians, sticker shock has also been a common reaction — until now. If you've longed for the convenience and portability of an electronic kit but your deep pocket refers to groove, not greenbacks, Roland's V-Club Set could be your ticket to ride. Although the kit is scaled back relative to the V-Pro, V-Custom, V-Session, and V-Concert sets, it features many of the same sounds and patches as its fancier siblings at a fraction of the cost.
The V-Club Set comes with five 8½-inch PD-6 single-trigger rubber pads, two 12-inch CY-6 dual-trigger cymbal pads, a hi-hat control pedal, a kick-drum trigger, and the new TD-6 brain. You also get the sturdy, foldable MDS-6BK drum stand, hardware, accessories, and connecting cables (with Velcro straps for cable management). The outfit can be expanded to accommodate as many as three additional pads and another kick-drum trigger for double bass action. The TD-6 brain's MIDI compatibility lets it interface with external modules and sequencers.
TRIGGER-HAPPY
The PD-6 rubber pads, though not quite as spiffy as the more natural-feeling mesh pads of the other V-Drum models, have an easy stick response and solid, dynamic triggering. Rubber pads tend to jar the fingers and wrists, but the PD-6 proved a bit more forgiving than similar pads because the material seemed a little softer.
The single-trigger PD-6 lets you play only head shots, and you can assign only one sound to the pad at a time. Because rim shots aren't available with the PD-6, switching to cross sticking to shift dynamics in a song takes some ingenuity. The brain features trigger inputs that can handle rim shots, so acquiring an optional dual-trigger pad could bypass the limitation. You could also assign a cross-stick sound to another pad.
The rubber pads are relatively quiet, but they're hardly silent, and subtle sounds (for example, the brush patches and mellow gong samples) are annoyingly marred by the sound of the sticks hitting the rubber. Depending on overall volume and other circumstances, that could be a problem.
For the most part, the pads are well isolated from each other with the exception of the floor-tom pad and the ride cymbal, which are attached to the same arm of the rack. A particularly hard hit to the floor tom will sometimes inadvertently trigger the ride sound due to vibration through the stand. Most playing dynamics were captured well by the triggers and were represented fairly accurately, but I couldn't get a decent buzz roll on many of the snare sounds.
A TOUCH OF CYMBALISM
The dual-trigger CY-6 cymbal pads are far superior to the rubber drum pads often used for cymbals. Modeled after the real thing, the CY-6s mount to ordinary hardware and are designed to mimic the motion of actual cymbals, offering a more familiar feel. Grabbing the edge of the CY-6 after a hit chokes the sound as it would with an acoustic cymbal. The pad offers bow and edge shot options but has no dedicated bell-shot feature. Assigning a bell sound to the bow trigger, however, lets you play bell patterns quite naturally.
For the feet, the V-Club Set includes the FD-6 hi-hat control pedal and the KD-7 kick-trigger unit. The hi-hat control pedal lets you open and close the hi-hat and do heel splashes. It is also assigned to change the pitches of various melodic sounds on some preset kits. The KD-7 kick-trigger unit includes a special beater and works with any standard kick-drum pedal. It's not quite like hitting a vertical bass drumhead, but the feel is good (albeit a bit on the bouncy side).
BRAIN FEATURES
The friendly-looking purple TD-6 percussion sound module has large backlit control buttons arranged in circular clusters, a volume knob, and an easy-to-read 20-character, 2-line backlit LCD. One button cluster controls the sequencer and metronome functions, the center cluster lets you select the song or the kit and has a Shift button for deeper navigation functions, and another cluster lets you enter, exit, and move about in the menus.
Two simple buttons let you scroll through the selections and parameters incrementally. Having to scroll through all the settings to reach a desired sound is cumbersome, though the Shift button allows for larger incremental leaps through the many sound options. Unlike its siblings, the TD-6 has no faders, scrolling dial, or iconic LCD, and it doesn't utilize Roland's Composite Object Sound Modeling (COSM) technology.
The rear panel features a hi-hat control input and 9 trigger inputs that accommodate as many as 11 pads (2 of the 9 inputs can handle 2 pads each using a simple insert cable or Roland's optional PCS-31 Y-cable). Six of the trigger inputs can handle both head shots and rim shots. The panel also has an ⅛-inch mix in jack for input of a CD or MiniDisc player to jam along with; an ⅛-inch phone jack for quiet practice with headphones; MIDI In, Out, and Thru jacks for interfacing with other MIDI gear; and two ¼-inch jacks for stereo L/R output or L/Mono output.
Finally, a DC in jack accommodates the included wall-wart adapter. All the jacks are identified only with tiny, nearly invisible embossed letters. The lack of silk-screened lettering makes identifying the jacks in low-light situations impossible, which is a hassle.
The TD-6 brain may be scaled down, but it has plenty of features. The TD-6 has 64-note polyphony, 1,024 drum sounds categorized into 13 separate groups (kick, snare, tom, hi-hat, crash, ride, percussion, and so on), 99 preset drum kits (one user-definable), and 262 backing sounds (from piano, guitar, and bass to orchestra, strings, brass, reed, ethnic music, and special effects).
You can individually adjust the level, pan, pitch, and decay on each pad setting, and you can control velocity and sensitivity independently. Effects include ambience, location, and wall-surface material. The overall ambience level can be affected for each instrument or the overall kit. Location adjustments include Living (room), Bathroom, Studio, Locker, Theatre, Cave, Gym, and Stadium; room-size selections include Small, Medium, and Large; and wall types include Wood, Plaster, and Glass. Each kit has a fixed-frequency 2-band EQ for adjustment of high and low gain.
SEQUENTIALLY SPEAKING
The TD-6 has an onboard sequencer to play and record sequenced songs and rhythms. The 150 preset songs include R&B, Metal, Ballad, Country, Jazz, Fusion, Reggae, Dance, and Brazil, plus a variety of basic patterns that are great for practicing with (audio examples available at www.onstagemag.com). It also has memory slots for 100 user-created songs. When recording, you can select time signature, length (number of measures), tempo, and quantization. Destructive and nondestructive recording modes are available, as is a loop recording function.
It is possible to edit the relative levels of the backing part, the drums, and percussion volume in a song, and you can temporarily change the tempo. You can also mute the preprogrammed drums in a song so you can play along. The excellent onboard metronome has selectable tempo, level, time signature, interval, and voice, and it can be used as a click or for starting out a tune. A mix in jack allows you to patch in recorded material to practice with.
ONE FOR THE ROAD
Whether you use it for performance, recording, or practice, the Roland V-Club Set is a full-featured and flexible electronic kit. Although the rubber pads jar my fingers and wrists more than mesh heads and acoustic drums do, the action is still pretty good. The CY-6 cymbal pads are the best electronic cymbals I've played. As with most electronic kits I've checked out, the sound selection is liberally sprinkled with cheese, but many of the sounds — acoustic and electronic — are excellent and definitely usable.
If you've been waiting for a high-quality yet affordable electronic kit, the V-Club Set might just be the answer.
