I welcome you to the forum, but I'm afraid you won't find much support for your topic here... This is a site dedicated to vintage drums and most on here will probably balk at anything electronic.

That said, I believe electronic drums have there time and place... (great for practicing when volume is an issue.. say in apartments or an old folks home.. or maybe recording tracks straight to a computer recording program) but, electronic drums are electronic.. they really aren't drums at all.

Me, I wouldn't get rid of a nice set in order to buy electronic drums... though I wouldn't be opposed to owning a Roland V-drum kit...

Agreed. I will say this however, in most and really nearly all cases, the reason that electronic drums and used is a volume or convenience concession; basically using them as replacements for real drums when real drums are not feasible. To me, the unfortunate thing is that they can become an instrument into themselves in precisely the same way that an unweighted synthesizer is not the same thing as a grand piano. When a drummer starts looking at an electronic kit in the fashion as opposed to just a quieter drum set, then it becomes something altogether different.

Back in the 80's I played in a pop cover band for a couple of years and truly my favorite thing about it was playing an electronic kit. I used a 22 space rack full of reverb units, samplers, drum machines keyboard modules, you name it and it was in there. All the 80's highly produced stuff I recreated note for note. Spent hours creating and modifying samples, adjusting reverbs and effects units and getting that all set up as one MIDI command per song. Need that ballad floor tom flam on 4 going into the chorus of the power ballad with a 5 sec reverb? Got it. Needed Phil Collins' monster sound with non-linear reverb? Got it. Need reverse reverb swell into a snare drum/tambourine hit? Got it.

One of my favorite songs to play was "I Need You Tonight" by INXS. The shaker was on my left foot trigger pedal with a delay to create the 16th note and quarter with my right foot. Everything else percussion on that track from the snare/handclap layer, the rim clicks, bongos, agogo bell, china/white noise layer was all there and all played by hand. I enjoyed coming up with the sounds and then figuring out how to physically play all that programmed stuff.

Guys complained at the time about "Simmons elbow". I never understood that. They are not acoustic drums so quit playing than that way. Now that cymbals are at least somewhat viable, you can set up a kit in a far more ergonomic fashion. You don't have to center a hi-hat over your left foot. Instead you can put it anywhere. For the cost of another pad and a Y cable you can duplicate it and put then wherever you want. One of the really cool things about that band was that people came in from all over the southeast and all said the same thing and that was that we sounded like we were playing live but listening to a studio recording.

So I'll jump off my soapbox and say, if you really want to become a better drummer, stick with real drums. If you want to experiment with electronics then that is fine. Understand what they are and what they are not, but don't get rid of your acoustic kit. They are very different instruments and should be approached as such.

Don't know about the Alesis kit, but I have both acoustic and electronic(Roland) sets. I use the e-drums to practice on, usually early am, with headphones so I don't wake the family. I don't think I'd use them for a live gig.

I think they both have their place. I started playing again on electronic drums. Worked perfect for apartment living. When I lived in Germany I kept the e kit at my house for easy practice. My practice space was less than 10 mins or just 2 kilometers away so I usually always just practiced on my regular set.

I would never sell off all my acoustic stuff just for an e kit. I would say use the E kit for practice and the occasional gig where you can't get away with an acoustic kit. These days I have done the quieter gigs with brushes or even percussion.

What is interesting is how the "big" guys do their sound. Sometimes a lot of electronic support; up to 50% of their sound is augmented by triggers of real samples. When you are playing all kinds of venues with uncertain sound situations I understand this fully.

I've played on electric kits live and to record, to me, no matter how good the kit is, it doesn't sound like an acoustic kit, especially coming through the pa. I absolutely hate them, if I see a band at a club with an e kit set up, I usually turn right around and leave, unless there's a friend of mine playing in the band. I want to hear and see a beautiful acoustic kit, e kits look so generic on stage. To me they are fake, the drummer doesn't contribute anything to the sound, other than turning a few knobs. Sure, they are fun to mess around on at your local music store, but that's about it. Besides, a good one is very expensive.

That article you posted was probably funded by a company that makes e kits.

If you live in an area such as apartment or condo etc with noise restrictions, They are a good resource to play and pratice on. But to have one as your only means of playing your technique and chops will suffer. I have to use one at my church when I fill in for the regular church drummer. I don't like the feel of the E kit. they sound so so to me ! Your experience may vary.

I play my electric kit 95% of the time at home. It's EXCELLENT for practicing... the built in metronome is awesome and the ability to route music through its Aux input and then layer the drums over top of it is great. They're also awesome for playing silently (though, if you're on a 2nd floor or higher, the sound of the pedals will still come through) and I love the ability to quickly switch between different types of kits.

However - I run a recording studio on the side and I'd NEVER use the built in sounds on an electric kit to record. Triggering a software suite with the MIDI output, sure, but I used to own the top-of-the-line Roland TD-10 set years ago and when I bought this newer kit, I purposely went with the cheapest module, while making sure I still got mesh heads. I could care less about how realistic the module sounds and what routing it has, because I will never use it on a release.

I do give the option to my customers to track drums on the electric kit and save some money. It's much easier to edit the MIDI data coming out of it on my computer than it is to set up mics and edit the audio tracks, so I pass along the savings to them, as I have to do less work. Most of the bands I'm recording go for this option lately, as the genres I most often record are heavier rock or metal, and the drums having a super realistic sound is less important here, since most big releases have so much sample replacement happening and quantizing to the grid line that it's hard to tell them apart from a well-programed plugin, anyway. However, I always suggest the lighter rock bands that come in that they track with a real set, as the dynamics just aren't there in an electric kit and it's much easier to convey a more organic tone through a properly mic'd acoustic set.

As someone said above "they both have there place and should be treated as such". I use an e-kit for teaching as all my students have acoustic sets so they get the best of both worlds as the result.I wouldn`t gig out with e-kits as nothing with ever replace the real deal of acoustic kits.So enjoy them both for what they are, as they do have there benefits individualy.

Wayne