7 Ways To Upgrade Your Electronic Drum Kit

Technology has come a pretty long way in the music industry and it seems like modern electronic equivalents of famous instruments are really hitting their stride.

But how do you take your old electronic drumkit with out of date digital technology and make it sound like it was made NOW. We’ll show you how…

Jed

Jed

How to upgrade your electronic drum kit

  1. Upgrade your drum module!
  2. Upgrade your kick pedal – use one that’s suited to your playing style and attack.
  3. Add more electronic drum pads or cymbals to your kit.
  4. Use a sampling pad (Like the Roland SPD SX) alongside your kit for additional sounds.
  5. Upgrade the snare to a Mesh Head snare for that acoustic kit feel.
  6. Use triggered drum software via MIDI – such as EZ Drummer. The Pearl Mimic has Steven Slate 5 Drums installed!
  7. Add an acoustic kick drum to your electronic kit using triggers.

There are multiple ways to revitalise your electronic drum kit and even an older kit can be made into a modern monster with the right gear.

Check out the video below to see how we supercharged an old Roland TD-9 with the Pearl Mimic which will overhaul the sounds of your electronic drum kit. The Pearl Mimic has got Steven Slate 5 drum software onboard which uses real life, velocity-sensitive drum samples to give you your sounds.

This results in the best-sounding midi response available on the market and will rejuvenate any ageing electronic drumkit – provided it has the correct connectivity available. The Mimic uses individual inputs and you’ll need all the cables necessary, so check that you can hook it up before buying one – but it’s worth doing!

1. Upgrade your drum module

The most obvious way to upgrade an electronic kit isn’t necessarily to change the hardware or the pads as those are simply the medium to create the sounds. Instead, you should look to upgrade the ‘brain’ or the actual source of those sounds which is called the Module.

Modules always come with an electronic drum kit but these will be of varying quality depending on their price point, functionality and usability. It’s a no-brainer (excuse the pun) to upgrade your module to automatically get better sounds out of your electronic drum kit. As long as the pads on your kit are fairly responsive and feel good to play, the module can literally be the difference between a kit that sounds dated with old samples and a kit that is studio or stage ready.

This can be a costly process but is more than worth it if you’re happy with how your kit feels already.

2. Upgrade your kick pedal

A good kick pedal is like a good pair of shoes – you love the fit and something just feels right. Often, electronic kits will come with kick pedals that can be upgraded to take the kit to another level. Or you might just want the same feel from your acoustic kit to your electronic kit and often drummers will have a kick pedal that they know and love in their arsenal.

A good kick will improve feel, speed, accuracy and be able to take a beating on the road depending on its moving parts. We all need reliable gear right?

3. Add more electronic drum pads or cymbals to your kit.

Most drum kit modules feature additional inputs which allow you to make your drumkit bigger according to taste and playing style. You can always add more triggers at a later date and it gives you the flexibility to do so.

It goes without saying that more drum pads or cymbals will give you more sounds at your fingertips and can work in a number of different ways. You could set up a crash cymbal pad to trigger massive booming sub drops if you wanted! Sometimes having the flexibility of an auxiliary pad is just what you need.

It also gives you more pads to fill out the feel of your electronic kit – by adding an additional tom you might be matching your favoured acoustic set up and so on.

4. Use a sampling pad (Like the Roland SPD SX) alongside your kit for additional sounds.

Adding a sampling pad alongside your electronic kit will open up your sound options. You can use the sampling pad to trigger loops to play along to or if you just want it for unique sounds that wouldn’t necessarily work in your full kit set up.

It can trigger midi for backing tracks in a full band set up or you can use it as your ‘clock’ to play to a click live or in the studio. Most pro drummers won’t be seen without a sampling pad to work with and the industry standard is the Roland SPD-SX with a fairly new competitor in the Alesis Strike.

5. Upgrade the snare to a Mesh Head snare for that acoustic kit feel.

According to most experienced musicians, the problem with going digital is losing the feel of the acoustic equivalent of their instrument. This is where Mesh heads come in. They’ve been designed to match the feel of real drum heads on an acoustic kit and have the same bounce back and attack that an acoustic drum would give you.

This is super important with fast rolls, flams and ghost notes where you really need the response of the kit to replicate that of an acoustic kit. Good Mesh head electronic pads do just that. They’re far better than your standard rubber heads in terms of feel. Mesh heads may improve the feel but won’t necessarily affect the sound – remember it’s the module that does that.

6. Use triggered drum software via MIDI and an interface

If an electronic kit has a USB connection and a MIDI connection (as most, if not all do!) then you can connect it up to an audio interface and use that to trigger sounds via software.

Simply put, you connect your kit to an audio interface via MIDI cables. The interface is connected to your computer and you use software to create the sounds. These can go directly into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) where the notes are determined by the electronic pads you hit but the sounds are determined by the drum software that you use.

Some of the best software out there, like Steven Slate drums on the Pearl Mimic is actually recorded drum sounds where a real drummer has been recorded playing by a master sound engineer in a world-class studio.

As you can imagine, this gives you massive flexibility when recording because you can control your exact sounds and you’re getting brilliantly mixed drum sounds directly into your workflow. Not to mention you can easily edit the MIDI notes and correct any rushed drum fills or apply quantization to put your drumming perfectly in time.

7. Add a real Kick Drum to your kit with a trigger.

For some players, the look is the biggest problem when it comes to electronic drums. In fact, as drummers, we’re often not used to being so exposed on stage without a big bass drum to hide behind!

We’ve got you covered here too. Some professionals add an acoustic kick drum to their electronic rig with a trigger on the batter head to connect it to the module. This can also help give you the feel you’re used to on your acoustic kit.

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Conclusion

There’s always a way to upgrade and improve your electronic drum setup. If you can’t quite bring yourself to changing the kit itself, then the easiest win is probably changing the drum Module which is incredibly useful for live drummers or players that want to rely on their hardware rather than a computer.

If you’re predominantly recording, then perhaps the flexibility of good drum software is the best solution. For the live players out there, you can also make sure that your electronic drum kit looks and feels the part too! Ultimately the benefit of electronic drum kits is that they are upgradeable, and you can improve your setup by making small changes.

Jed
Jed
Jed has worked on our shop floor, handled guitar content on the site and now leads the digital content team. He's equal parts rock frontman/guitarist and wannabe folk singer-songwriter. Jed's a PRS, Tele and Orange Amps lover with an unhealthy obsession with fuzz, octave and ambient effects.

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