Gear Friday: Yamaha DTxpress III

Wanting to get some decent recordings and lacking enough microphones, I purchased some electronic drums about a decade ago. That marked the end of me having a band to try recording with, but it also allowed me to practice in private so to speak, and I rather enjoyed playing these drums.

So, what did I think of them?

Well, for starters, the cymbals didn't ever sound real to me. It's very hard to get the hi-hat to feel like you can play it slightly open, and they just don't have that natural ambience of a real hunk of metal.

The pads, as most of you could probably guess, didn't have the same rebound as a true drum. While that wasn't really an issue for me starting out, any drummer that came over immediately hated them because of the feel.

But, as for the toms, snare and kick, it sounded great. In fact, some of the recordings I did with Grindstone Remedy were using this set (we had one drummer that knew the ins-and-outs of using them) and it turned out pretty nice. However, due to the "feel" issue, I moved on to something else. You'll spot that in my next electronic drum post.