Playing drums over 20 yrs

Progressive rock , Motown , Old School Hardcore Punk and whatever fazes me at the time.

There are a variety of kits in the controller (i believe 50 factory, and another 50 user patches), ranging from big rock drums, to a tight little jazz kit, to heavily processed and even some electronic stuff, to boot. There are tons of individual kit pieces, so you can mix and match (even on the stock kits) until you find a setup you like. You can also import your own samples (so you can trigger hits or loops or whatnot) via an SD card, which is not included. There are an overall ambience knob and hi/lo eq knobs along with the master volume. The ambience can be more finely tuned via the "other" menu (the usual verb types and adjustment parameters are present). A suprising range of effects are available via the multi-fx section, and the pads can be eq'd individually as well. Muffling and tuning kit pieces are easily dealt with via front-panel buttons. Kits, etc can be saved and loaded to/from the SD card. Overall, it's a pretty broad palette, and the onboard sounds are great for jamming around, or playing along with your favorite tunes. For recording, though, i'll be using this kit to trigger Superior.

The controller is very well-featured, and easy to use. Bluetooth, and a place to put your phone are built right in. Very cool for playing along with spotify (a headphone style aux in is also present if that's your preference). USB is on offer, and can either act as an audio interface to your pc, or to just deal in midi, via a menu option. Quarter inch line outs are present, and the headphone is a mini plug (so no 1/4" adapter is needed). There are two additional trigger inputs, cymbal 2, and aux. Cymbal 2 is used by the extra cymbal included with this kit. Aux does not support dual-triggered devices, so it'd be best suited to something like a splash or other non-articulated percussion. You can use it for a tom, but rim and head hits will both trigger the same sound. The rest of the kit is connected via a db25 cable that breaks out into the various (labelled) kit pieces. The lengths are pretty much correct...i had no problem with any of them reaching any piece of the kit. The second cymbal has its own separate wire. The drum pads are very responsive and have great rebound. They feel pretty fantastic. The snare is nice and big! The kick works well, and seems solid (they recommend that you do NOT use felt beaters on your kick pedal, to avoid wear and tear on the kick head). It will accommodate double kick pedals. The cymbals are also pretty rugged, and responsive, though ride bell hits take a bit of effort (they mention this in the manual as well). There is a calibration menu item for the hi-hat, and if you run into trouble with hat response, you may want to add a little more tension to the hihat stand spring. The supporting rack seems pretty solid, and the mounts work well. Note that throne, hihat stand/pedal and kick pedal are NOT included!

It will take some time to get everything set up and tweaked. The instructions are okay, but could be clearer sometimes. There are separate instructions for most of the kit pieces. The drum module's manual refers to a pdf for some of the more advanced features, but i haven't gone looking for it yet.

The controller module is a very light plastic, so it probably won't stand up to much abuse, but the kit frame and pieces are very solid and well-made. The cymbals rest on knife-edge type pivots atop the stand (hence the realistic "swing"), and each cymbal included an extra one.

This is a really sweet little kit, and priced fairly given the features on offer. Just for the fun factor, it's been worth every penny so far. The cymbal triggers are great, and the mesh drum heads are just fantastic, compared to rubber.

I haven't needed support thus far.

It's great to have a drumkit around the house that won't aggravate everyone for a square block when played late in the evening. It will save a ton of time programming drums, and looks really cool, to boot!

I mostly help other people make or fine-tune their own music by adding or revising drum, bass, synth, and/or guitar parts

whatever comes along

Sound quality of the td-17 module is fine. I will say that the alesis strike module sounds much much better in the same price range. With some drum-tec kits, it was much better than using the built in sounds.

My absolute biggest problem with this kit is the quality of it, i have had this kit for 7 months (ive been playing drums for 30 years, 10 years professionally) and have had so many issues. First i had the bell trigger go out on the ride, luckily zzounds took care of that for me. Next the kick pad started triggering improperly after about 6 months. The hi hats started to produce a loud audible buzz from the plastic which in turn caused it to trigger incorrectly (worked fine for 6 months), also one of my cy12c has broken, the plastic underneath the cymbal has cracked and hits the choke trigger rendering it useless. All i have to say, is ive seen Michael Shack demo these kits and whack them super hard, i do not. I play on it roughly 12 hours a week, if you plan on using it like i do, might want to look for something else.

I would steer clear, buy something else.

The second and most important bummer of this whole situation is Roland was a hassle to deal with. They do not reply back in a timely manner, and also, you are required to pay for the shipping to them, even if it is determined to be covered under warranty. I find that insanely unacceptable.

Played drums for 30 years, professionally for 10

All styles including, pop, electronic, rock, metal, death metal, indie, neo soul, funk, etc

I been playing for 19 years now

Christian,hip hop,rock