Jman's NAMM trip 2013

[Jman]

Thought I would put a rundown here of my quick NAMM trip this year. Just an overview of what I saw and heard in my brief visit. Nothing in depth, but my personal insight/views.
I took a few pics, but even though the rotation orientation is fine on my PC they upload wrong, so I just zipped the pics in a folder and loaded them to my FTP. You can download the zip here:
https://files.secureserver.net/0sAs7e6uJ5TYJ5

1st off since this is the unofficial 2Box forum I'll talk 2Box. Had a couple pretty good visits with Bengt this year, spent some time on the kit and talking to Bengt and also Gary from HandinHand. The 2Box kit was at the Tama booth and it is exciting to see the opening up of this distribution door in the US. This should be big for the 2Box company and a good addition for Tama distributor Hoshino USA.

As we already knew the kit will be equipped with rubber heads for the US configuration. I played the kit and must say the heads feel pretty good. There were 2 different rubber heads being used. One is softer than the other. The decision has not been finalized as to which heads the kit will ship with, but there is talk of using the firmer head for snare with the slightly more giving head for toms .... that is the way it was set up at NAMM and I must say it felt pretty realistic that way.... the snare felt like a tight crisp and snappy snare while the tom felt more like how a real acoustic tom would feel with the feeling of laying into the head... pretty cool actually. Triggering was excellent on both heads. I enjoyed playing the kit, showing Bengt and Gary my Gene Krupa tom solo .... I could tell they were impressed, and I know they didn't mean it when they said Gene Krupa was turning over in his grave. 

The kits will come in 3 configurations. For the drummer that already has the Kick pedal, HH stand, and Snare stand covered, the kit can be purchased a la carte without those 3 hardware items. The other choices are with a Tama Single Kick Pedal, HH stand and Snare Stand. Lastly the same as the last one mentioned only with a Double Kick Pedal.

I will neither confirm nor deny that the 2Box module at NAMM had a 32GB card.....
Bengt doesn't look a day older than he looked last year!

OK, Alesis DM Dock. I will try and bite my tongue here .... I lean toward tearing into this thing since it has shown up at NAMM 2 years in a row now and it was nowhere near being ready for show again this year. Thursday I sat down at the kit and tried to play it ..... OMG .... horrible, terrible latency, only single zone on ride and crashes, no edge zone, no choke .... I could go on to say even a no name Chinese knock off ekit would perform better, but I must hold off .... I am biting my tongue as I specifically went back to the show today to try and find out what the heck was going on. I was told this was the Alesis App and the Alesis App doesn't work well, but there will be other Apps, like from Garage Band and others, other programs and sounds that will work great .... I honestly hope to see that happen for them, so let's see what happens this year. I was told this was going to release this year, so let's hold our breath....

Pearl EPro is including new kits and those that already own it can download the latest.

Yamaha DTX 900 series will have an M after the 900 .... no longer will those owners need to buy and load their 500MBs of memory, it will come already stock/loaded from the factory. I had some time to talk with John Emrich. There is a new Yamaha Phoenix kit that will be loaded in the new DTX900M and that kit will also include some of the Zildjian Digital Vault cymbal sounds. I must say that Yamaha PHX kit in the DTX sounded pretty good .... beefy sounding low toms with good sustain ..... man, we just gotta hope John can get ahold of one of those PHX kits and sample it for BFD!

Aquarian In Head we have already been hearing about these.... and On Head .... OK so both In Head and On head are scheduled to hit the market finally with all the various sizes. For On Head for example: 8, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 16" heads. The On Head heads are a pretty nice setup. They are pretty quiet and trigger very well. The new rim sensor is a piezo based sensor, but is encased in a special rubber, so it inserts under the rim ... it will work well with the On Head, since that is an FSR type head, you will not get crosstalk from the head when striking the rim. And the rubber creates enough of a padded buffer to allow good isolation also.

Roland's BT-1 .... there has already been quite a bit of talk about this one. My original reaction in my mind before playing this was ..... ehhhhh another little single zone side pad .... why? Then after finding out just how this thing works I had a whole lot more respect for this little guy. It is not your typical, stick a piezo in a piece of plastic or metal, stuff it like a turkey, wrap it like a rubber burrito and plug it in type of a thing. This is actually a cool little side pad that gets some respect from me. It is a dual piezo device, with a type of switching mech built in .... it comes with mounting hardware so you can mount it on an L rod, to a stand, etc .... and you can also mount it directly to a lug on your snare or tom. It WILL NOT SUFFER FROM CROSSTALK..... that's right, unless you actually hit this thing directly you will not trigger it. Had a good chance to test it on the kit Steve Fisher was using, pretty amazing little thing. Had a good chance to catch up with Steve and Drew .... good guys....

Mark Drum is adding new kits/instruments, software improvements for deeper dynamics I was told. Your drums/sounds will have to come directly through Mark Drum though. I was told they will not be going in the direction of making it an editable program capable of loading your own or other 3rd party sounds.

Dauz .... met up with Dan Dauz ... looks like he is getting more active again in edrums. He makes an extremely durable epad..... there are lot of Dauz pads out there that have outlived the Rock dummer that was using em....

I'm sure I'm forgetting some ... but I'll come back if I think of something else. J

[Haggis-man]

Thanks for sharing Jerry, a very interesting read.

Cheers

[Murgen]

Thank you so much for taking the effort to feed us with info. 

[BURNIN AMBITION]

jman you are the best. thank you so much!!!

[rythm]

Thanks, Jman!

[digitalDrummer]

There's more NAMM coverage - together with pics of some of the new products - in the latest issue of digitalDrummer which is now live.

[Jman]

There's more NAMM coverage - together with pics of some of the new products - in the latest issue of digitalDrummer which is now live.

Looks good Allan, another great issue!

[SHwoKing]

Thx Jman for the report. Aquarian OnHead is something that really dig. But didn't find much info about it. Are they made of rubber or something else ? How quiet is it ?

That could really be a helpful setup for me as I keep swapping back and forth from E-kit and A-kit. And I don't have enough room to have both of them set in my practice room.

It does not take muche time to swap (20 minutes) but that would take even less tim i guess and take less space as well which is a always a valid point in my book.

[Jman]

there is a thread over at vdrums with more discussion about the In Head, On Head etc...
http://vdrums.com/forum/showthread.php?71700-Aquarian-demos-inHead-onHead-PEDS-and-Rim-Shot-Drum-Triggers

[BURNIN AMBITION]

jman since you tested the rubber hears can i ask you something? how do they compare with the mesh heads, noise-level wise? are they louder than playing just with mesh heads? and how much louder?

i am thinking of trying the rubber heads for the toms and kick. certainly id give the kick a try. does the kick with rubber head feel closer to the real thing? imanaged to get a very close to reality feel in my snare, with my drum tech design, snare mesh head being as tight as it gets, and dont think i will ever change it, it is like a real snare, but id like to experiment with toms and kick. but if the toms are way too loud, id pass. does the rubber kick make the beater not bounce that much? i havemanaged to eliminate that with the cloth i put in the kick pad as most of you now, but i surely would like to explore a second option. thank you. (also perhaps double mesh head with rubber could also be very veryideal but i dunno and perhaps noone has tried that yet)

[Jman]

jman since you tested the rubber hears can i ask you something? how do they compare with the mesh heads, noise-level wise? are they louder than playing just with mesh heads? and how much louder?

i am thinking of trying the rubber heads for the toms and kick. certainly id give the kick a try. does the kick with rubber head feel closer to the real thing? imanaged to get a very close to reality feel in my snare, with my drum tech design, snare mesh head being as tight as it gets, and dont think i will ever change it, it is like a real snare, but id like to experiment with toms and kick. but if the toms are way too loud, id pass. does the rubber kick make the beater not bounce that much? i havemanaged to eliminate that with the cloth i put in the kick pad as most of you now, but i surely would like to explore a second option. thank you. (also perhaps double mesh head with rubber could also be very veryideal but i dunno and perhaps noone has tried that yet)

First off, feel.... I talked to Bengt at NAMM and joked and said that there will be lots of people that are absolutely ecstatic about how great these new heads feel! And then there will be some that will decide they hate them .... I only say that because that is the way it always is with heads and people's "feelings". That is the reaction with Yamaha's silicon heads too, some love them some not. Personally I liked the feel of the new rubber heads. One of the main things I think I liked was the fact they had different firmness for smaller or larger drums, tighter/firmer feel on small toms and snare, more give in the surface on large toms that mimic that head feel. If you are dead set on changing heads, I would suggest trying one out because that is the only way you can really decide something as personal as that. I didn't really pay much attention to the kick honestly, but it all felt very natural to me and everything triggered great.

Also, noise .... there was not a head to head comparison that you could do as there were no mesh pads side by side, but I didn't notice them being loud, of course you are in a busy .... buzzing auditorium at a major show, not a quiet environment to begin with.

[BURNIN AMBITION]

ok thanx my friend. i hope they will be soon ready for us to grab!cheers

[nathanotis]

... Triggering was excellent on both heads. Triggering was excellent on both heads.

Uhm... You double triggered. 

[Jman]

Uhm... You double triggered. 

Yeah, but the heads didn't!    Besides, whatcha talking about .... look at that post again....