Side by Side Comparison of: Alesis

I bought it for 650, lucky timing I guess. For the price you can't beat it! I am an experienced drummer and it is frustrating when first playing. It took forever to set up and YOU HAVE TO ADJUST YOU TRIGGER SETTINGS. Because the default settings are there to make you mad. The sound quality is great and there are plenty of sound modules. The snare is set up on a piece with no support so it falls out of place after 1 song MAYBE. Terrible design. I bought a snare stand for 30 bucks and have been happy ever since. The hi-hat control is not the best. If you are looking to play intricate hi-hat rhythms this is not for you. I have gotten better with practice, but its not the same as a real set and that's a common theme throughout all of it. As for the actual sound of hitting the drum set, your neighbors will not hear it, but you'll piss of your mom in the next room because the bass pedal is pretty loud.

Pros: Inexpensive, DM10 module is complex and should be great for recording/ live shows even., looks great. Adjustable cymbals and toms, somewhat quiet
Cons: Frustrating to set up, snare holder falls down, hi-hat control is hard to use.

I read the reviews about Roland and Yamaha and what those reviews said about Alesis, which were not favorable, anyway for the money and I have a friend that has an older Alesis set and I played his and I thought they were great. I made the purchase for the DM10X Premium and I liked them right after they were all set up and working, however there was only one issue and that issue is when I struck the crash simultaneously with the bass/kick there would be NO crash sound or for that matter any trigger/drum/cymbal when striking the bass/kick would simply mute it, you only hear the bass drum/kick. I went to a forum online and there was an update for that issue posted by an Alesis employee, thank goodness for that, (UPDATE: 9/22/2014) long story short the update fixed the issue 100%, please follow the update instructions EXACTLY how they tell you to install into the DM10 module and you'll also need a printer type cable for the USB hook up to the module. I love this set, it is truly like playing the real thing simply amazing.

I still have cross talk issues to this day. But for the money, it's really a great kit! I live on a third floor apartment so to be able to throw on the headphones and jam, it's tough to beat.

And the amount of kits and the quality and different effects or other instruments that you can mix with the voices is a lot of fun. When I show off for my friends I will usually just play 4-5 random kits from around the world. The African kit with the voices is always fun to show off with. Same with the electric guitar kits.

I also bought a used keyboard amp from craiglsist that is very powerful. These drums were amazing when I had jam sessions with co-workers. Everybody was very impressed.

I was thinking that I would have the ability to choke the symbols, but unfortunately I haven't been able to make this work if it really is an option with this set. It's a tiny complaint, but with this being my first electric kit, I found myself trying to choke the cymbals many times during our jam sessions.

I have played drums since high school, and while nothing is quit the feel of real drums, the versatility of this kit and ability to record give this electric kit some big advantages.

The Dm10x Is everything and more! I'm a professional drum instructor and I find the kit has great sensitivity and very acurate sounds for all the kits and percussion instruments. The larger drum heads are great! Gives you the feeling of playing a full size kit if you don't think about the depth of a particular drum. One of the great features is being able to play along with a virtual band with the drummer in the song or without by simply selecting an option to silence the drummer. The equalizer works great as well for adjusting each individual voice around the kit while playing or before hand. It's also nice having a separate volume knob for headphones as well as another knob just for overall volume.
There's so many things you can do in this kit... Like editing any voice of a particular kit to customize it to your own liking. The cymbals, at least the crash on the left corner of the rack if your sitting to play the kit, is chokable as well as the Ride. You do however have to grasp them on the very outer edge where the first line is engraved in the rubber with your index finger and thumb. If you reach in deeper like you would to normally choke a real brass cymbal, you will not be able to produce a choking sound. Also the drums have dual triggers so you get the coolest sounds between hitting the sweet spot of a drum as well as the rim for another sound altogether. The ride has triple zone triggers as well, which is nice especially when you wanna play the bell and others areas of the ride too during a song. And last but not least... The price point for a kit of this quality and a beautiful chrome rack (which is just as nice as the Gibraltar rack on my acoustic kit).... Is excellent! .... $1200 plus tax.... Now compare that to a "Rol..." kit...lol...and you'll be saving thousands! Oh! One more thing! You get two nice size crash cymbals and.... Two floor toms! Sweet! But wait! There's more.... You're playing on real mylar heads, not mushy springy screen doors! Lol... So... Don't think twice. I've done tons of research before hand, and I couldn't be more pleased! Great job ALESIS!
Sincerely.... Bob... Valrico FL

I have been a drummer for over 25 years (on and off). I had a pretty nice kit that I kept in the basement and drove the family crazy with the noise. Plus, it was hard to keep the kit decently tuned when in the basement. I sold the set and went without for about five years and was really getting the itch to play again. I started looking at electronic sets and was stunned at the cost of a decent Roland set. I had decided to start looking for used Roland kits but had no luck. I was on Amazon one day and typed in electronic drums into the search and the Alesis kits showed up. They looked really nice, so I read all the reviews and it seemed like a good kit for the money. I ordered the DM10 first and then the next day (Black Friday) the prices dropped significantly. I canceled the DM10 kit and ordered the DM10X kit instead. With the discounted prices, discount for signing up for an Amazon Credit card, discount for signing up for Amazon Prime, and the $300 rebate from Alesis I ended up paying $680 for this kit.
The kit arrived in two days (Prime advantage) and I hauled it into the basement to set it up. It took a good hour to set up, but was not hard. I took my time and just made sure it was right. After set up I powered it up and started playing. This is a really nice set. It sounds great out of the box and sounds even better after some tuning. I am still learning how to do all the tuning and saving my own kits, but it is pretty easy after some playing around.
The kit is not silent when playing. If you live in an apartment you will not want to play this at night or you may have neighbors complaining. If you live in a house, no problem. My wife and kids can hear me play in the basement, but it is not real bad.
The feel is pretty good. I would say pretty close to a natural kit. The sound is very good. probably better than my old kit because I could not keep it tuned. Plus, with this kit I can have over 100 kits tuned just the way I want.
The only negative I have for the kit is the cymbal placement for one cymbal. It is too far to the right and is sort of awkward. I plan to get a cymbal stand for that cymbal and that will fix that. All in all, I love this Alesis kit!

my daughter loves this, its in her room and you wont be disturbed as long as she had it on her earphone, connect it to a speaker and everyone enjoys this little workhorse. Still looks good and sounds great after about a year of purchase.

It's a pretty decent drumset. The only two problems I've had with it are as follows:1. The screws on the left side don't hold up well, so I have to constantly pull the left side up since it slides down slowly after playing.2. The hi-hat had a problem for a day; I would hit it once, and it would keep playing by itself at a fast tempo. I was upset, but the problem went away as quickly as it had appeared (I blame my brother for doing something to it since I was away for a few days and he likes to play the drums hard). This problem happened 5 months ago and has not reappeared, and so I am still vey satisfied with this purchase.I got this product for $199 and I believe that is a good price. The new price I see of $299 might be stretching it since I know there are other options at that price. Nevertheless, the quality of this electric drum set is pretty adequate.

I am very surprised at how good this set works, usually you have to so spend alot more for a usable electric kit. I would consider this a practice only set, the lights on each pad would get annoying if you tried to perform. It folds up so small you can keep it anywhere, and it has many features you wouldn't expect from something like this. From opening the box to playing along with music on my phone was about 15 minutes.Seriously, buy this one

This is wonderful for a beginner, which I am. It has some flaws that I'll cover in a second, but if you've always wanted to play the drums and not upset your neighbors, then this is the kit for you.Drump pads & symbols all light up when you hit them; pedals are the only 2 things that don't light up. 10 different drum sets to choose from but some are non-traditional drum kit types (think Caribbean-style) and you can play along with a drum trainer & metronome. The kit is responsive to how hard you hit it, but at a basic level. You can't rim-shot with this, nor hit your symbols at odd areas; it's responsive to how hard you hit it.The symbols/pads are adjustable but the symbols tend to wiggle a bit from time to time. Maybe I've not figured out how to tighten some aspect of them yet, but they wiggle after hitting the hell out of it, which I suppose is to be expected, to a point. The sound of this kit isn't horrendously loud, which is somewhat bad since you need to turn your volume mostly all the way up to reliably hear yourself. Regardless you can still Aux-In and play along with your iPod and hear both comfortably; I just wouldn't mind the kit being a bit louder.As a beginner, this set is perfect. I plan on going up to the Alesis DM6 $350 model once I'm better, but it doesn't light up or teach you like this one does. Should be busy with this for awhile and pound it into oblivion.Quick note for what this comes with: Drum kit as pictured, with 2 pedals & drumsticks. The sticks actually go into the two posts on the Left and Right of the setup. That's another nice feature of this kit! Seat is not included.

i received this kit this morning. And everythin went so good, thanks for the super fast delivery too. If your aprofessional drummer I would not recommend you this kit but Its perfect for beginner with very good price. I mean you can afford more expensive kit after youve got some basics too. Bit this is just So easy to set up and tiny kit too. Very good. I would recommend you to try if youre a really beginner. An amazing drum kit.

I bought this as a Christmas gift for my daughter and she absolutely loves it. Minus the drum stool, the set comes with everything including the drum sticks. And it's completely assembled. It has adjustable height setting and the pads can be moved to suite the players personal preference. It took me about 20 minutes to get it ready. Once I showed her how to operate the controls and set the different "Play-a-long" drum beats, she was off and running.For parents who worry about the noise, all you have to do is plug in a set of headphone and close the door.

I bought this kit because I have had an Alesis Nitro for a couple of years and I loved it. I thought this kit would be a great upgrade. So far it has been hit and miss. The mesh heads are really nice and give a slightly more realistic feel than the rubber pads on the Nitro. The quality of the drums and hardware is outstanding for a kit at this price point. The module can be a little cumbersome to navigate, but it's not horrible. Just takes some patience. It did have the known issue of ghost notes out if the box, but updating the firmware seemed to solve that. That said, I have noticed that there are still some triggering problems after the update (mostly when striking two toms similtaneously). It's not a deal breaker for me and I have yet to reach out to the support folks. Maybe they have a fix for it. All in all, it's a nice kit and I really like it. You can't beat it for the price, but because of the lingering trigger issues, I can't give it 5 stars.

UPDATE: 7/31/2017 - moved from 3 to 4 stars.
After getting the replacement power supply a little over a week later which I am grateful for, I have been spending a lot of time tweaking this kit, mostly adjusting the triggers due to crosstalk issues (where one trigger sets off another electronically). The crosstalk issues are annoying and it took a while to get rid of random crash or tom hits but I've gotten rid of most of it. There's still the occasional one or two.

PRO's
- You have 100 custom kit options and a vast array of "voices" to program with from an orchestral triangle to guitar sounds and even digitized voices.
- There are some realistic kit sounds from authentic instruments like Gretsch, Ludwig, more.
- Realistic feel and tactile response, particularly if you tighten the heads just a bit.
- Excellent audio control: For example, my "MAIN OUT" has an audio control knob that allows me to adjust the output volume all at once or I can adjust each trigger individually. I can also adjust the audio to the headphones for when I'm in practice mode. These only change the volume of the drums/triggers not the external source volume (if taking feed from a monitor input for example). I do like all of this for my purposes but I'm having to get an add-on volume control to allow me to manually adjust the volume of an external source so I'm not at the mercy of the sound-board guy.
- The hardware is very solid. I'm real happy with that. People have complained about no bass pedal but honestly, I prefer to pick out my own bass pedal that is responsive to my style. I personally bought the DW3000 dual setup - works fantastic. You also need to buy a drum throne you're comfortable with, most kits don't come with one but again, I want one that I like not something someone guesses is a one-size-fits-all sort of thing. The rubber rim strips do need to be installed during assembly but you can't tell that from the pictures and its not really a big deal.
- Get a quality Drum Monitor for those times you want to audibly hear yourself. I mostly use headphones when practicing but my wife likes to hear me play, especially when I've got a series of songs I'm working on so I'll fire up the Drum Amp. I went with the Simmons DA50 which is perfect for my needs. I tried a couple other brands, one blew within the first 2 hours of using it.

CON's:
- If you're playing a complex set with rapid fills and crashes, I frequently get misses where I hit a crash or a tom trigger and it doesn't respond.
- The hi-hat doesn't trigger as expected. What I often get is an open cymbal slap rather than a closed slap when the foot is all the way down. I haven't figured this one out yet but have recalibrated the hi-hat several times and changed the voice a few times and still have the issue.
- The right hand crash position is awkward so I may end up moving it to a standard cymbal stand so I can move it around.
- There is no uploading of your own drum voices into the DM10 X module however, you can create up to 100 of your own kits in the software within the module only. It would be nice to have the ability to make the changes on the computer then upload them to the module.
- It would be nice if upon power-up, the module retained the last kit used rather than starting over from "000" default, forcing you to scroll to the kit you want to use.
- I would really like to see more proactive software updates, the latest ones out there are 3+ years old.

Other Observations:
Customer Service: Outstanding! They're very responsive.
Snare stand: I would have liked the snare stand to be a bit taller but its very sturdy and stable despite being a bit short. If using a standard snare thats maybe 3-4" thicker, it would be fine. I ended up buying a nice snare stand from Pearl that did the trick.
Cables: I'm really anal when it comes to wiring, it was my profession for many years so I'm really picky about how things should be cabled. I ended up carefully removing the 10" of heat shrink and wrapped the entire kit with Wire Loom to clean it up. Turned out pretty nice.

My end-goal is to use this for regular weekly gigs and practice so it will be important for me to have the ability to quickly set up and break down without compromising cables and hardware. Now that the cables are wrapped and tied properly, I'll be able to pivot the two side bars somewhat onto each other for easy portability.

Summary:
Would prefer better software maintenance but its overall a solid well made kit.

Had more crosstalk than normal sounds at first. Was told that I needed to update the firmware and I have to have Microsoft or Apple software to do it. There were no software requirements listed so that was not good to hear. Tech support referred me to a video that shows a guy playing only one drum, LOL! I dug into the settings and turned the rim sounds all the way down, now the main pads work like a regular kit would. Sounds great, plays great, and that's what really matters. I would not recommend this as a gift or for someone who wants something that works correctly straight out of the box. I do not regret this purchase. Just be prepared to learn and tweak some deep settings as soon as you get it.

It took me a very long time to decide on a kit... I did get some help from the question section here but I would like to write the review I wish I would have read before buying this kit.

I was back and forth about drum sets - especially buying one on amazon. I was looking to buy a drum set that didn't take up a lot of space, had all the features I needed, and that I could plug into my audio interface and record to my computer.

This kit has met all of my expectations and needs so far.

I have been drumming for about 15 years. Always on an acoustic set. Let me start out by saying if you are looking for the feel exactly of an acoustic set. Buy an acoustic set. This feels like you're playing on pads... as it should... because you are. They have an upgraded kit with mesh - I don't know what it is like but I do plan on buying the upgrade at some point. When I do I will rewrite this.

Putting it together took about an hour and a few glasses of Captain Morgan. It is not difficult. But the directions are not very great. Make sure you have everything set up comfortably before you start plugging everything in. Think logically too.
The stand construction is very sturdy. I have no issues with it moving around or drums losing position.
The pads are... well, they are just pads. They are loud. They are hard and they do dent. I have one or two in them now but that hasn't effected my playing at all. I sometimes forget I don't need to hit as hard to get a louder sound as I would when playing an acoustic kit. It is tough to get used to the rebound from them - especially the cymbals and hi hats.
The layout can be altered. I like to play with my ride cymbal low as do many drummers. I got it very low with a little manipulation and I will post a photo below to show you. This is not as low as I usually like it but I really wanted all of my toms on the rack. I think in the future I may buy another stand for a tom.
The biggest issue with buying an electric kit was getting the sounds I wanted out of the drums. I have never owned another electric kit, before but this is pretty easy to do. They have 100 built-in kits. Some are awesome. Some are fun. Some you wonder who was on drugs and why were they allowed to add that kit. But everything you need is there.
It also has 100 user kits which I have been going crazy with. Personalizing a kit is pretty easy. From what I had read before I bought, you were only able to use effects from other kits and copy them to a new kit. Not actually true. What you can do is go into the module and edit each drum. For example - I want a loud deep bass drum. I can edit the bass drum, pick from - I don't know - maybe 15-20 different kicks, then adjust levels on it, make it louder, put reverb, adjust sensitivity, tone, and a few other options too. And you can do this with all the drums. It is very useful and a lot easier (than what i thought I was going to have to do) than going through each kit and picking out a drum I liked and copying it to a new set. This makes making your own sounds very easy, especially if you like your drums to sound a certain way for different songs.
Also you can adjust levels of each instrument on the module. This is very handy to use if you are playing and find one thing to be louder than another. You can also adjust the levels when you edit the kit but you may find that during a song, for example you want less cowbell. Which would be next to impossible. :)
You can plug in an iPod or mp3 player with an aux cord which is very useful for practicing.
I have yet to use the "accompaniment" feature. Which really I thought was a waste of space anyways.

There are some downfalls.
I do wish I had more rack space.
The plug ins for the second crash and 4th tom are labeled under percussion which tends to be difficult when trying to remember what levels to adjust.
The pads do not rebound like drums but more like hitting a hardwood floor - but this is to be expected.
I do really wish there was a button you could push and get to a track. Maybe a number pad like "I know I want my drum kit #122 so take me there now" button would be nice.

But the pros for me outweigh the cons.
Sturdy frame - great effects - easily customized - and it sounds great.
I have played these through my headphones and through a small Simmons amp I bought on amazon as well. Both sound qualities are great. Be cautious not to max out your levels on the control panel but instead increase the level of the amp or headphone levels.

This kit is not a $4k Roland. Nor does it claim to be. But this is an exceptional kit and for a thousand bucks you really can't go wrong. It does what I need it to and I am very pleased with my purchase.

I spent a good deal of time researching electronic kits and ended up looking at both the Roland V-Drum series and the Alesis DM series. Not having a few thousand dollars to spend on a kit I had to go with the best value for the money I did have. The DM-10 X ended up being the one to get. For me I wanted good feeling drums to trigger outside kits as well as good quality sounds internally. I use the Roland V-Drums as the bases for comparison as they are pretty much the Cadillac of electronic drums, and they come in various flavors to suit different budgets. The closest V-Drum that compares in price is the TK-9 series. So how does it measure up?

Drum Feel: V-Drums - There is no getting around it. The Roland V-Drum series is the best feeling electronic drums you can find today. They are also one of the most expensive. The mesh heads can't be beat, that's for sure. Now Alesis' RealHead pads have gotten a pretty tough time trying to compete what with the original ones feeling better than a rubber pad, but were more rigid than a natural drum. The DM-10 X... improves on this.

Still not close to V-Drum quality and still can get a bit stiff feeling in certain situations, however I compared these pads to the DM-10 Pro kit and I do feel an improvement. These new pads are also thinner than previous drums. If you modify the RealHead drums with a mesh head conversion (DMDrummer has instructions) you get a LOT closer to the right feel, but the V-Drum still inches out ahead. [NOTE: If any of you are planning on getting this kit with the mesh upgrade in mind please note that due to the drum pads different design you will have to use a mod specific to the DM-10 X. I will update when I do the upgrade myself.]

All the issues you maybe have heard about the DM-10 having horrible crosstalk between triggers is a thing of the past. No crosstalk between pads. There is even zero crosstalk between the heads and rim triggers. Right out of the box you will be playing the kit with very little hiccups. Okay all of your acoustic live drummers our there listen, because I want you to set your expectations accordingly: NO ELECTRONIC KIT WILL MATCH THE FEEL OF REAL DRUMS. Electronic kits can only do the best they can to get close as they can. Not even the most expensive $5K+ V-Drums will completely feel like the real thing.

Cymbal Feel: Tie (sorta) - Roland's VH-11 HiHat feels more genuine, but Alesis' DMPad 12" HiHat is no slouch. If you like getting a HiHat bell sound then the Roland pushes ahead as the VH-11 is a dual zone trigger with the DMPad 12" being single zone. The crash cymbals on the other are pretty much on par with each other with the Alesis getting points for offering larger cymbals, which really does help with the feel of them.

I originally wanted to go with the DM-10 Pro kit with the Surge cymbals to get the most realistic feel, however every Pro kit I tried the cymbals had triggering issues (they seemed to like a small sweet spot and not trigger anywhere else on the cymbals). These cymbal pads do have a nice feel to them for being rubber triggers. I have had a little issue with the choke on the crashes having a narrow sweet spot, but this could come from me not doing any fine tuning (will update when I get off my butt and actually tweak my kit).

Kit Layout: DM-10 X - No comparison. When it comes to drum size and amount the best TK-9 kit will always come up short to the DM-10 X. The TK-9 sports a single 10" snare and three 8" toms while the DM-10 X has two 10" toms and three 12" (one snare and two toms) drum pads. The DM-10 X offers larger cymbals at two 14" crashes and a 16" ride as opposed to the TK-9's 13" ride and single 12" crash (both Alesis and Roland offer three zone rides).

I have been trying out various electronic kits in the 8" and 10" sizes thinking that I would be okay with that, but when this baby came to the house and I started playing on the 10" and 12" heads I was glad I went for this kit. While the larger pads make it trickier to adjust your set the way you like it (due to the pads taking up more space) it's a small price to pay.

Hardware: Tie - Both have rugged metal bars with fast locking fasteners. It's pretty easy to make adjustments with wingscrews for no-tool adjustments. Both also have the same limitations like the cymbal stands not being adjustable in regards to their location on the rack. BTW his isn't as big a deal as it sounds. If you get creative with the boom adjustments you can cover a lot of variations in cymbal placement.

Sounds: DM-10 X - If sounds are your focus the Alesis DM-10 knocks the ball out of the park. I have played through both the Roland TD-9 drum module and the Alesis DM-10 and I notice a definite difference in the sound quality of the instruments played. The DM-10 sports over 1000 16-bit uncompressed instrument samples as opposed to the TD-9's paltry 552 instrument samples (in compressed mp3 and WAV format at that). The instruments on the DM-10 also sport Dynamic Articulation, which means they have been multi-sampled for variances in timbre based on how hard you hit the instrument.

The editing parameters on both sound modules are roughly on par with the TD-9 focusing on drum pitch, muffling and cymbal size and the DM-10 focusing on pitch, decay levels, coarse/fine tuning and pitch based on velocity. The DM-10 gets a sizeable edge in the effects department. The TD-9 mostly focuses on ambient parameters for room size and mic placement along with a 2 band equalizer. The DM-10 does the same for room size and equalization, but also adds compression along with it. On top of that you also have additional effects you can add like chorus, flanger, various delays and more.

I still haven't played with all the options on this thing like creating drum kits (I'm looking forward to trying the layered drum options) or editing sounds. Heck I haven't even calibrated the drums yet. I will update as I get more into the DM-10 X. If you want a really good feeling electronic drum kit with some great features at a decent price this is the kit to get.

4stars for the price and portability. simple but useful. Much smaller than it looks. Definitely for the beginner! Kids and maybe rockband! ez setup but it takes about an half hour to unpack, unwrap and assemble. Plug and Play.

Yes, it's an inexpensive beginner set, which is what I was looking for. My 8-year old son loves it, and I use it with headphones to practice. So far, nothing has failed but we have only had it for a month. I wanted to purchase something to see if drumming was something that my kid would be into, and for me to practice quietly. The sounds are about as realistic as you'd expect (don't expect super-realistic sounds), and the pads are relatively touch-sensitive. It's a fun way to start playing drums.

Great kit once I made a couple enhancements. First...the bass pedal is likely designed to have a soft mallet inside, but the manufacturers found it cheaper to put a plastic one with a thin foam pad. This means when you step on the pedal lightly it's just as loud as when you step firmly, which makes the bass pedal way to loud and distorted for regular playing. I opened up the pedal and put some soft foam rubber wrapped in tape over the foam pad. It took a few tries to find the correct amount, but now it both sounds AND feels better..MUCH more realistic, which makes me think this was closer to the original design. The other is the fact that the snare is off to the side. I got some 1/2" iron pipe with a 90 degree fitting. The snare screws right into the fitting, and the pipe fits in the clamp on the rack. Now the snare sits further out in a MUCH more comfortable position. The one thing I LOVE about this set is how small it folds up, so with the tweaks there isn't another drumset out there like it!If you're looking to store or transport this drumset, get yourself one of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GUPZP4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00. It fits the drumset nicely without having to disassemble it. I reinforced it with pieces from the box the drumset comes in (bottom and large sides...still attached to each other).

Overall is a great drum set, i bought it for my nine years old son. Easy to set up, it includes drumsticks. It doesn't come with any headphones or internal speaker so you need to be aware of this and be prepared with something to actually hear any sound. So far so good.

My 12 years old son is learning drumming and need a set to practice at home i decided to give this a try. So far we're very happy he loves it, bassically he uses with headset and sound very nice, easy to asembly yand when not using you can make it compact. My only issue is with pedals, because would be better if were a bit heavier to stay in place, the move a bit.

I got this drum set for my son, as a stress reliever, and my granddaughter, who at age 6, seems ready. And, truth be told, myself, for much the same reasons. Setup was straight forward, with all pads working. And works great for playing along with other music fed in thru an iPod or equivalent.Totally satisfied, though here are a few things to consider with this very entry level set.1. Volume across pads is a little inconsistent, with some pads quieter than others. So when you are playing on two pads, and go to a third, it might seem a bit off.2. The base pedal is louder as noted by most reviewers, but not terribly so. Works.3. The top hat is a little quieter than other cymbals, or so it seems to me.4. The built in rhythm track is pretty nice, but definitely louder than the drums. The instruction manual, however, indicates that you can adjust the sound volume on each track set set up or down, so I'm thinking that should handle once I take a moment.5. My son is an experienced drummer, but definitely takes it easy when playing this set as he's concerned whether they can take any all out punishment for long. He plays more often than the rest of us, though, and seems to have fun doing so.So mission accomplished.I paired up with the Behringer MS16 Active Personal Monitor System also sold through Amazon. I was initially concerned when I unboxed the speakers, that they would handle the job, but they work fine, and can be heard throughout the house all the same.And remember speaker cables.Update July 12, 2014 - With just occasional moderate use, one foot pedal has come apart and we are probably looking at super glue to try to return to working order. Have also just had a cymbal break off at the top of it's post. It appears to be brittle metal at best. So I am going to need to look into replacement parts if available. Else I'll need to try to drill out and reaffix. Changing my rating from 5 to 4.

be ready to work this set. it's a real chore to set up, the snare 'arm' has never held in place it was even replaced by alesis, as was the kick... triggers are iffy! i enjoy playing this kit, but i suffer each time. over time all the triggers start to fail, but that's that's why it's a reasonably priced kit.
and when you can't play a regular kit because of the noise what else are you going to do...?

the feel is fine, the mylar was not a problem and i have both mesh and mylar. i would never trust this in a paid setting... the triggering is too temperamental, maybe i need more time to make a custom kit just right, but so far no luck. out of 20 strokes maybe 5 miss...

Alesis customer service is really good, they addressed my issues and offered quick replacements (when they were in stock!!)

Start with the good..... The set is fits nice in my space, the setup of the rig was straightforward up until the point where you turn it on. I like the mesh heads. The bounce you get on them makes it easy to drum. I went for the aluminum set, and the joints are heavy plastic so it stays together but has a bit of give since you can only get as rigid as aluminum and plastic joints will allow. During play nothing seems to move. Now for the caveats.... The sound module has a bunch of presets and sounds... Some are fun but most just don't sound quite right, so you come away with the impression that this is a toy, not a drum set. Fortunately I already own a higher end drum VST, so thankfully when used as a midi device to power that VST, I get really nice drum sounds from the kit. But the DM10 sound module just does not sound good. Kind of like the drums you would hear on an inexpensive keyboard on display at the mall. So next I was convinced that ride cymbal was malfunctioning, you would tap on it harder and harder and it would still be quiet, then if you finally hit it hard enough you would get a loud crash. I was about to ship the whole thing back as defective. But since spending hours to take it apart and get it to fit back in the box was not appealing, I decided to look online for answers. Two things ... I did a firmware upgrade and I found a youtube tutorial on calibration (sensitivity, threshold, retrigger) This was helpful. I was able to get the ride to work properly, and other triggers to work better. Wish that would have been in the quickstart guide. Also, it has a headphone jack and a volume control knob. But it barely goes loud enough, have tried with a few headsets but it is still really too quiet.
Not all of the cymbals are chokable, that seems silly, not sure if it is the TRS versus mono cable, or the sound module, but all of them should have been. I also want the Ride cymbal on the far right, but the cable lengths place it at the third from left position. I did manage to get it there but this looks like yet another cost shaving decision. Lastly it does not come with a kick pedal, luckily I read other reviews so I was prepared and purchased one. Also the clips that allow you attached the cables to the aluminum pipes do not account for the mass of cables as you leave the sound module. As you get less and less cables to route going right, the clips are properly sized. For the price, maybe it is okay. If you watch videos of the drum kit being played, be aware that the sounds you hear may NOT be from the sound module. I might have spent a little more and got something better. If you are buying this for your kids, probably okay.

I love the drum kit. However I was very disappointed that the power supply was a UK style power supply. A 9VAC power supply was impossible to find locally so I'm left ordering one. Also Alesis is closed on the weekends so I'm out of luck for now. I was really stoked to record some drums this weekend as my days off are few and far between. Bummed.

Please note, I'm only giving this 3 stars instead of less because the sounds itself are excellent quality, when and *if* it works.

I came into this purchase with the absolute highest hopes, considering the great reviews it has. I anxiously waited 5 days (even though I selected 2 day shipping) and when it arrived, I spent about an hour setting it up. A friend of mine helped me set it up (he's a drum specialist from Guitar Center). I plugged everything in, turned it on, and immediately it fails to calibrate. No matter what I did, it would not calibrate. After about an hour of looking into it, I found that someone was able to solve this by putting the cymbals into the wrong input (plugging cymbal 1 into 2, and 2 into 1). Already off to a rough start, considering how much I paid for this thing to fail right out of the box. I still had high hopes and figured I can deal with it. I plug in some music, and start playing. I noticed my snare wasn't triggering unless I hit it on the rim. Well, it turns out that if I hit the dead middle of the snare, it fails to trigger at all. I try the toms, same problem. On top of the toms not triggering, it started triggering the secondary (rim) sounds instead. I can understand 1 pad being defective, but literally every single one? Very, very frustrating.

This kit sounds great when it works, and if you're okay with it working 50% of the time, this kit is for you. I hope this doesn't happen to anyone else, but judging by other reviews, it has. I'm incredibly disappointed, because I was very excited to get this.

I have honestly had a blast in the 4 months that I have had this kit. Wanting to get back into playing, and as a bit of stress relief, I researched through the multitude of offerings and bet on this kit for the perceived bang for the buck. Once set up the kit is responsive and allows for a wide array of kit styles. The ugly head arose when one of the Tom triggers checked out. I tried everything they would ask if I tried Before I attempted to make contact with Alesis. I contacted Amazon first and was advised to contact Alesis to see if the problem could be rectified directly through them. This has proven to be a challenge and after being ignored by Alesis (No Reply....at all), I returned to Amazon for help. The Kit gets 3 stars as long as it stays up and running, Alesis gets 0 stars for being non-existent and Amazon gets 5 stars for supporting me over a non-existent company that is pushing product and leaving them hanging. Bottom line, spend more and have Amazon deliver a Roland to your door!

Not the best electric drum set out there, but for the money it good. I bought this for my son for his birthday and it doesn't hold up the best. The lights lasted only a month maybe and the overall quality leaves something to be desired

Bought this for my husband. He really liked it. However one of the foot pedals quit working within 3 months.

Was surprised it sounded so much like drums. Only drawback is the snare is way too low in volume and you have to hit it hard to get the sound. My husband is frustrated with that. I wish there was a fix for it.

I had to replace the piezo element in the kick drum pedal twice within the first 6 months. Also, one cymbal clamp broke within 6 months. Not a bad little set otherwise, but it would be nice if parts were readily available.

It's a decent drum set, the pads are very loud when struck and you cannot roll very effectively on the pads. I had the drum set for 3 weeks but the bass pedal broke at the bottom and cracked in half so I will be returning it. It would be a good practice and beginner drum set for someone younger and newer to playing the drums.

This is probably my first review on Amazon. I'm writing this review because of how helpful it would have been when I was browsing for my first electronic drum and how helpful reviews are.When I first got this drum set I was very excited after assembling (which is very easy). I hooked it up to my stereo and was really enjoying learning how to drum. The coach feature is very helpful in teaching you very basic beats and in no time I was getting better and better keeping beat with the metronome. Unfortunately after a little over a week the bass pedal wasn't working properly. I would have to push down harder to hear the bass. Maybe it was defective, but I decided to refund this item and purchase a more expensive one.

Tom's drum heads are two small. Its too easy to hit the rims which gives you a different sound. One tom is not even configured to be used with this head. The mylar drum heads are ridiculous and have no bounce back unless struck hard.

Overall - I wouldn't recommend this kit or any electronic kit given that it takes so much money to get a normal sounding drum kit. I chose the electronic kit because I didn't want to irritate my neighbors but now I would gladly take a wood drum kit over an electronic one.

It's less expensive than some other brands, but be prepared to pay the difference in downtime, shipping, and frustration.
It's a good kit when it's working. It would be better if they used QA testing and provided good support.

The unit I received had a UK power supply and a broken drum module. Alesis support took a month to get the right power supply to me and then wanted me to send the drum module back to them for a 6 week repair.
If you buy it, use your 30 day Amazon return window more wisely than I did and don't mess with manufacturer support.

Update: Three drums and a two cymbals broke within 45 days. This is going to be an expensive mistake.

Well packed, all expected items arrived. Sounds great when it works, and plays great.

After a few weeks the controller started to simply not play any sounds - it recognizes triggers and the display works and the sequencer light flashes when on but no sounds come out. A little later I come back and it works fine. This is experienced via the headset as well, so it's not the external amp.

Next, the snare started to fail around August. It barely works. Now, in 2017, Tom 2 is doing the same thing. I must make the Tom2 rim and head sounds the same or it won't play.

Too late to return it so I am stuck with an intermittent drum kit. This is what I get for buying used.

It had problems from the moment I opened it. A difficult user menu to control the sound. It made some kind of ambient noise, sounding like stactic. The computer was registering contact on one of the drum pads, even if it's not being touched. It is difficult to callibrate the sensitivity. Too low and it won't register the struck note, too high and it gets overlap from near by drum pads. 800 bucks is a good deal, spend more.

This set is made to compete with the Roland TD30 for thousands less in price. It almost does but there are some important differences that may not make this professional quality. The design of the bass drum trigger is suspect. Mine broke quickly and I had to wait weeks for a replacement - the replacement broke minutes out of the box! I actually have to pay for shipping to have it replaced again. The set looks great and when working sounds good with plenty of features. Customer service was as helpful as Alesis policies allow them to be i.e. they would not take a return and expect the customer to pay for shipping for defective product. Also you will need to update your kit right away with firmware (a bit of a process) and the hi hat calibration can be tricky and take quite some time. The customer service rep was responsive and sent me a different bass drum trigger and pedal - its small ugly and won't accommodate a double bass pedal - but it works. The mylar pads are very loud for an e-kit and you may want to spend some more on some mesh heads or a 6820DrumS upgrade for $125. It is not a set that you can play in an apartment with headphones unlike the best Roland sets.

In short be prepared to find an additional bass drum trigger that is dependable and well designed - If Alesis takes some time to work out the design flaws then this kit though not equivalent to a Roland TD30 would certainly be an alternate consideration given the price. I own both and I never would have gone for the Roland if the DM10X was a "professional" musical instrument in terms of design, build quality, and willingness to allow the return of a set that never worked quite right from the start.

this thing sucks. it will do what you want if you are a beginner. but programming anything to MIDI is impossible. save yourself the trouble and make a drumset out of 5 gallon buckets and your grandpa's ribcage like I did. \m/

Updating my review after 1 year. My review at 4 months is still below.The quality on this is terrible. In the course of 1 year we have had 6 drum pads and 4 cymbal pads replaced. The bass pedal has died as well. Customer service has improved over the past review - but it's still not great.I don;t recommend this set. While he enjoys it still - the amount of time spent missing pieces while we wait for paperwork to process, ship dead items in then wait on the arrival of working ones is not worth it.Look for something else.--------------------------------------------I bought this set for my teenager for Christmas. He is a beginning drummer and I didn't want to have to listen to drums from his room all the time. He loves it. It was easy to set up, and is easy to use. He changes the settings as he needs creating different sounds. He plugs his iPod into the set and plays along with all his favorite music. My wife has since offered to buy him a "real" drum set but he likes this and would rather keep using it. I like that all I hear is the sounds of tapping. He was always using his drum pad and this is no different.Now the bad stuff - one of the cymbals stopped working and 3 of the brackets wobble and cannot be tightened anymore. I contacted support via their website. I didn't get a response for over a week. I have now swapped a few other emails with support saying they are "processing" my report but still nothing. It's now been a month and I still have a non-working cymbal and wobbly brackets.Nice initial use on the product - but terrible customer service. Be warned. If the service was good - the rating would be higher.

It's a great price for an e-drum kit (especially as a Lightning Deal), and for the most part, the sounds and responsiveness are quite good. The problem, however (at least on the one I received), is that hitting the snare and the hi-hat pads at the same time (which you tend to do quite often playing drums) caused one or the other pads (sometimes both) to not respond or to respond with a different sound. This was pretty much a deal breaker, so I ended up returning it.

I purchased this kit for my 5 year old who has been taking lessons on a small table top drum kit for a few months. It works well and very adjustable for different sizes. The only issue and it is a big one is that the kick drum pedal is not working. It sounds about 20% of the time. This is very annoying and I have to reach out to Alesis for a replacement part. I hope they send me one that works soon.

Like another reviewer had mentioned this kit arrived with one of the symbol arms broken which I was willing to make work. However, after two weeks of use the bass pedal had went fully functioning to partially functioning and then quickly to completely non-functioning. I did like this set a lot for practicing in quiet at home unfortunately it did not meet my expectations.

First time reviewer on Amazon but I felt like I had to write this review, given all the positive feedback for this kit. The problem for me is that the volume is all out of whack. In general, the whole kit is too quiet. I've cranked everything up to the max (pad volume, kit volume, master volume) but it's still way too quiet compared to the amount of noise coming out of the thing.Even in the simplest configuration with nothing but headphones, I can barely hear the snare. I almost feel like something's wrong with the electronics on my unit, given that nobody else has reported issues.I'm really wishing I could return it, but unfortunately I threw out the box before I knew what I was getting into.I guess I will just use it as a midi controller.-Matt

I live in Costa Rica and flew back to the US to pick up this drum kit. I carefully packaged this kit up in multiple suit cases and brought it home with me. When I arrived home I set up the kit, only to find out that the power adapter was a European model that did not fit our standard outlets and the power outage was incorrect for the drum module. I purchased a new power adapter a the local hardware store. Now with the proper power, the drum kit turned on, but there was no sound what so ever. I have been back and fourth with the customer service department and they are not offering any reasonable solution to fix the problem. It seems that I am out $1,100 now because this kit is just sitting here taking up space because it doesn't work and there is no way to fix it without purchasing a new drum module. Since the problem arose, I have read multiple similar situations from other people with the same problem. Total BS. I do not recommend purchasing this drum kit.

drums arrived defective. i bought it to use with Ez drummer but it does a poor job at that too. the hi-hat cant open or close.... even when not using ez drummer, it makes random noises like its being hit.. i don't touch it at all. i contacted the seller and they wont accept return. save your money and buy better drums expensive or inexpensive.. any roland or kat is better than the alesis.

We are disappointed with this set. It came with several parts missing. We still can't mount the snare, one of the toms, or the module. The parts needed to mount these did not come with it. The only option presented for missing items is to mail the whole thing back. Can't find customer service. If you are considering this set, please proceed with caution.

I've had this set forjust under 11 months now, and have had two of the drum pads quit working.
I returned one (which I had to pay shipping to send it in), it got replaced, and they sent back the wrong size pad. Between everything with the first pad going defective, it took around 2 months to replace. That's way too long, if you ask me. In addition, I feel a customer should not have to pay to ship a defective item to the manufacture for a repair/replacement.
Now another lad has go e out (right after I got the first defective pad situation all straightened out), and I have to go through the whole process again.
I will be asking for a refund through Alesis, seeing as I hardly play the set, and it's gone down on me twice now. If they won't provide one, I will absolutely be selling this set.
I will never buy another Alesis product again!
Product quality is mediocre, customer service representatives are good, but the return process is ridiculous!

Had it for a week and the kick drum and one tom has failed. Cymbal arms coming loose as well. I'm not a hard hitting drummer, so I can't imagine how long this kit would hold up to someone that hits hard.

I got the this last month and some of the drums work and the snare and tom 2 doesn't work!! I called and they sent me out another drum snake LDK11 and the two main one's doesn't work again! The snare and tom 2!!!! I need this for church and I paid for something that doesn't work!!!!

Horrible product. The bass drum and the high-hat stopped working shortly after the 30-day return policy expired. Can't believe that companies like this remain in business selling sub-standard equipment. However, KUDOS to Amazon; they helped us handle a return to the manufacturer and completely satisfied our needs! This is exactly why we shop at Amazon.com

I wanted to like this drum set, I really did. I was very excited to order this set, as it was a graduation gift for myself. I haven't played the set in years. I first time I put together the set, the hi-hat cymbal would not work. I tried unplugging it, plugging it back in, and making sure there was no dust on it. It never worked properly. Amazon was excellent in sending a replacement set. When I put this set together, the hi-hat functioned, but the bass drum pedal was defective. I returned both sets because I never had the opportunity to play with every component properly working. Purchase with caution. Kudos to Amazon for its excellent customer service.

i bought this drum set and was so excited cause it was my first drum set i started playing and had a good beat going after a week i had played it at least 4 times for like 30 minutes i was very gental with it and the kick pedal stopped working whenever i tried to use it it did'nt work so i called in and told them about it and they said to send it back and i could either 1. get my money back or 2. get a replacement and it was my first set of drums and i loved to play so i got a replacement thinking what are the odds it would do it a second time well the second set did the same thing only got to play that one around 3 times so i returned it and got my money back i would not recommend this product they seriously need to fix the problems with the kick pedal and after reading some of these reviews just now i'm not the only one whose had this problem

the sound is good all the pads work but when i received this item the rack was warped and did not stand up straight. i contacted alesis and they would not return my calls so i had to contact amazon and they were able to get me a new one.

EDIT: I'm leaving my original review below but have to note that I ended up returning this kit. The hi-hat pad went bad within two weeks of light use (I'm a adult just doing beginner level exercises on it 20 minutes a day at most). Although I originally praised the build quality, after very light wear other problems arose. The build quality here is actually quite horrible. There are drum kit game controllers for Rock Band that supersede this quality. I think Alesis should be ashamed of this product. I've written them about the Mac OS compatibility and they responded saying they could not reproduce the problem. The hi-hat going out was the last straw.Amazon has been very good about the return but boxing this thing up is a utter nightmare, it comes in a very very small box for it's size. Do not waste your time or money on this kit unless you're buying it for a five year old to learn on. It is not worthy of an adult. I would not buy this kit for my child either. I've communicated with others in the Alesis forums on the vendors website that are reporting quality problems with the DM6 and DM10 kits also. I'm not seeing this type of negative reports for Rolands products. You generally get what you pay for but in this case I believe we have a very high defect rate on an entire line of products that aren't well built and a vendor who truly does not care. That has been my personal experience. I suggest going to the Alesis forums and doing some research for yourself there to decide if it's worth the risk. With all the pain its caused me, I would say the DM Lite is one of the worst purchases I've made in the last ten years. If you intend to really use it as a musician for MIDI purposes, band rehearsal, etc.. please take my advise on look elsewhere for the sake of your music and your band I would avoid the Alesis branded e-drum products... My original review is below...After much debate I decided to give the DM Lite a try over the Roland TD4KP. My objective is to have a high quality, portable drum kit for home studio use that could also be taken to coffee houses. From all demos I knew the TD4KP was a better designed product in terms of sound quality and portability (it just folds up) however the DM Lite cost less than half of the TD4KP and I was only seeing positive reviews, so I gave it a shot.With the Alesis DM Lite, Alesis has provided a picture of this unit nicely folded on the products home page as if to say "me too" but the comparisons really stop there. The DM Lite does not fold up in the same way. In fact there was no design effort put into this kit having a fold up feature as the Roland kit does (Roland hold a patent on this feature) so Alesis is sort for falsely marketing this. I say "sort of" because they never claim the kit folds up they just show pictures of what it looks like out of the box on their site. To get it back to that state from being playable takes about 20 minutes. The sound module on the Roland unit is vastly superior to what Alesis delivers. Allow me to state the problems: First the quality of the kits themselves. The snare and toms sound ok. The kick is way too loud and regardless what speaker you put it through it distorts. The high hat and crash on the most natural sounding kit in the module is immediately recognizable to novice ears as fake. The samples are overall weak. The sound modules built in trainer and other beginner features combined with the quality of the kits mark this as a beginners product and that's unfortunate because the Roland kit I assumed it was a counterpart to is pro grade in every possible way. Designed to be portable for beginners intermediate and pros. That being said this kit is hard to beat at the price point for a beginner. Alesis sound module may not be up to Roland (it also cost half the price of the Roland kit), but it beats Simmons and D-Drums products in this price range. If you run the kit into a good PA with decent EQ options and add a reverb or digital delay between the kit and PA you can make the internal sounds workable for a live setting. As much as I love the MIDI option here, you do notice the kits built into the module are a bit more responsive than what I've been able to do with MIDI (that may be my software I've just tried EZ Drummer and GarageBand 11's built in drum kit software instruments).The overall build quality of the pads and the content delivered here is a good. Not fantastic, but impressive for the price. The foot pedals seem cheap and should have better grips on the bottom but mine are still working so no gripes.Since I despise the sound quality of the included module I knew as I was unboxing that I would not be using the built in tones. I knew from the youtube samples I listened to of this kit vs the mentioned Roland. They are just night and day different, but fortunately this module as MIDI out. So a big part of the missing two stars from my review of this otherwise almost outstanding little budget kit is the MIDI feature. Connect this thing to Mac OS X Mountain Lion and Garage Band 11 and select the Rock Kit, apply the Room reverb and select the Drum Punchy compression option and you're in rock drum heaven with this thing. Play around with some of Garage Band's other kits and combine the EQ and reverb options and you have a pro sounding synth on your hands with a very responsive DM Lite kit! Yea! Well, almost Yea.... This is why I bought it, however this is not working flawless.Here are the issues I'm having:1.) The drum module is not compatible with Mac OS X Mavericks. Doesn't work with Logic Pro X, Garage Band 11 or X or Ableton Live. It's just incompatible with the latest Mac OS X as Alesis has no ETA on the fix... I'm very unhappy about that. Alesis support is working with me to try and solve this. They have told me that the product has no known issues with Mavericks and that they can't reproduce in their lab.2.) Works great on Mac OS X Mountain Lion and Garage Band 11 when you try to record/track though MIDI. The module locked up on my a few times (when using the MIDI out option) but hasn't in a last few days. It sounds great and opens the door to great drum synths out there from Garage Band to EZ Drummer or whatever software based kit you'd like.I will provide an update on how well Alesis support helped me resolve the MIDI issue with OS X Mavericks.