Alesis DM-10 Studio Kit Review

The Alesis DM10 Studio Kit

After an extremely long wait for the DM10 studio kit to finally become available I jumped on the first deal I could find and scored one of these black beauties for only $900 plus shipping from Zzounds. I got it shipped to me as fast as possible, and was surprised at how quickly it came in.

The very first thing I noticed was the box the DM10 arrived in. An extremely large 75 pound box. Pretty hefty, and strange that it would be shipped in only one box that large, but much to my dismay everything in the package was secure and has little to no wiggle room in the box so the goods are safe.

After ripping everything out of the box I was a bit overwhelmed by how many pieces there were to the kit, I'm by no means a crafty guy, but I do like a good project, and setting up the rack was just that. It took about an hour or so to get everything setup, and I'm still trying to get everything into a comfortable position. The rack itself is a sturdy, light weight aluminum, but the clamps that 

hold everything together are only a tough plastic, so it could be possible to damage the clamps very quickly. But once everything is setup you get your self one amazing looking kit.

Now onto the drums themselves. The mylar, dual-zone pads are decent. They're not amazing, but they're not terrible. Acoustically they are pretty noisy. No where near an acoustic drum kit, and they're not deal breaker loud, but they are much noisier than mesh heads, and probably more noisier than soft rubber. The heads themselves are about as bouncy as regular drum head, as they are regular drumheads, but theres a strange, hard foam underneath the head that absorbs most of your hit, taking away alot of bounce that you could be getting. While they aren't extremely bouncy, they are extremely sensitive, and can pick up you playing with your hands or even fingers for the most part. The mylar heads can actually be replaced fairly easily and cheap to mesh heads, and you can follow the tutorial here on DMDrummer.com! 

The cymbals are the next part of the kit, and if your planning on buying the Studio DM10 you've no doubt looked at the DM10 pro kit, and the rubber cymbals will entice you to get the studio kit, over the Surge cymbals with the pro kit. The cymbals, in my opinion have an amazing feel to them. They are a soft rubber with just the right amount of bounce and cymbal swing. The triple zone ride is the largest of the four cymbals included, and also has choke. The bell on the ride is a little small for my taste, but in the end, you will get used to it, and be pulling of quick bell accents in no time.  The first crash is also extremely nice, while it is only single zone I believe, it too has choking abilities, a must have for any drummer. The third crash is a cheap little crash, thats only a singular zone, and DOES NOT have choke, but feels amazing nonetheless. Finally the hi-hat cymbal, which has no choke and is only single zone, but who really chokes their hi-hat? Dual-zone triggering would be amazing on the hi-hat, giving you a definitive edge accent, but sadly it does not.

Finally onto the module itself. The module itself is fairly good, while it doesn't have as many features, sliders, or knobs as some of the other guys, it does an extremely surprising amount of functions from changing how every click of a metronome sounds, to layering sounds on multiple pads, and real-time note sequencing with a sort of tab viewer, and many many more features. I have yet to touch the surface of the functionality of the DM10 brain, but I definitely think its a very good module in terms of features. While the sounds of the module aren't bad, they aren't sonically amazing achievements, but the fact that they stored as much as they did in 128 mb of storage is beyond me. There's 100 kits, and thousands of sounds, each customizable to quite an extreme degree, and the quality is better or equal to other electronic kits I've heard. The DM10 does work excellent as a MIDI controller for VST drumming software, and in the end with almost any electronic kit, I believe you'll end up using your computer over the module, so why spend $2000 on a drum module?

Now out of the box, the DM10 studio kit needs alot of work. The crosstalk or Xtalk of the kit is a little outrageous, and you could be triggering your ride cymbal every time you hit the snare, or trigger everything anytime you hit anything. The DM10 has multiple settings that battle this xtalk: There's xtalk send, xtalk rcv, and the sensitivity and threshold of the drum. While all setups will be different, you'll have to spend alot of time trying to get everything just right. No, you can't just max all the xtalk settings, because then you won't be able to trigger more than 1 thing at a time, so start in small amounts and work your way up until everything is just right. You may also want to stuff soft cloth, or other material in the tubes, around the tubes, or have the kit on a drum mat, so that the vibrations from the drums are decreased, thus reducing the xtalk.

Overall, the DM10 studio kit is the best value you can possibly get in electronic drums at the moment. When compared to things around, or even within $1000 of its price range, such as the Roland TD-4s, the DM10 Studio kit is the most complete package you can get, with pretty amazing sounds, a fully featured drum module, decent UPGRADEABLE pads, and pretty sturdy hardware, you really can't go wrong, especially if you plan on triggering VST software. While the DM10 takes some work to get to its score, and its not perfect, I think the Alesis DM10 studio kit deserves a...

8.5/10

... For its extreme value, good sounds, good expandability. For the price it really REALLY cannot be beat.

And be sure to check out DMDrummer.com