Vdrums w/real heads?

[reachjkh]

My church has Vdrums and everyone hates them. The drummers get worn out on extended worship services of up to 1 1/2 hours.(some songs go 30 minutes with extended drum solo portions)

 

There is no sublety on the cymals so we've already replaced the hats and ride with real metal. We will probably replace the snare soon unless my idea works.

 

I suggested trying real drum heads on them instead of the mesh ones that come with it. This would probably help to reduce the fatigue on the drummer due to more natural drum feel. The sound from the real head may be a good thing or not, we'll just have to try them. Hopefully it will be the best of both worlds. We really don't care if the set is silent since we already have some live cymbals and have put up a plexi shield.

 

Anyone try this before? Results?

[Jazzman]

No.

 

Why do people hate them? If the sound system is good then the sound of the set should be great. What sound module is he using? Is the drummer good on them? It takes a little bit of talent to balance out the drum sounds in the mix, and you must use them alot to get the feel of them. They could be slugish to the drummer if he is used to playing on real drums and the mesh feel slows down his drum action.

 

Does he have a good seat to set on? That could hinder his performance too. Position of the set, worn out triggers will realy affect his playing.

 

Just a couple of thoughts.

 

Jazzman

[bassdrummer]

You might try tightening the mesh heads a bit too. If silent drums aren't necessary, what about buying an acoustic kit in the $500-700 range? I have both electronic (Roland V-Custom with TD-8) and acoustic (Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute) kits and love them both. Don't know what your church's music budget is, but if the V-drums are that big of a problem, I say buy acoustic drums. At my church I play a cherry red lacquer finish Pacific maple/basswood kit (CXL, I think) that I found at a drum shop on clearance (the 100% maple Pacific CX wrapped finish series were just coming out) for $500 a couple of years ago. We put Evans G2 heads on toms, Power Center on snare and EMAD on bass and it sounds great for our contemporary worship service. Sabian HHX Evolution Dave Weckl cymbals (and one AA thin crash) round out the kit.

 

Anyway, sorry to ramble on, good luck. Interesting idea to put real heads on V-Drums; I don't think it'll work but I've never tried it.

[reachjkh]

Ok let me explain my situation better...

 

The cymbals are a non issue since we've already replaced them, but the electonic ones would give the occasional loud crash when trying to quietly ping on them. Again, non-issue now.

 

The drums sound OK to everyone but the drummers themselves

.

The real issue, is that even though we are a very loud church musically, the drummers tend to wear themselves out faster than on a real set probably because they don't feel the impact the same and tend to play harder. We use a whole bunch of drummers from around the area, and they don't all have experience on these types of heads, so again...they just plain wear themselves out.

 

The drummer frequently gets called on for extended drum pounding during extended play songs(like I said, sometimes up to 30 min. for a song). And I do mean pounding. It sounds very agressive some weeks.

 

We don't want to build a real solid cage right now, even though we plan someday to move back to real drums. In the meanwhile, I'm wondering if some real heads would give the needed triggering to the module, while not being quite as loud as an actual set. This would give a possible mix of real and sampled drum in the room that would allow the drummer to feel the power without so much exertion.

 

Did that make any sense?

 

Well, anyway, I think I'll just go try it on one drum and see if we like how it sounds. I was just hoping that someone had tried this.

 

thanks,