experience of playing the SSD drum kits via their Roland V-drums. The new 3.5 V-drum preset drum kits have been optimized to work with all Roland v-drum brains and pads. Most users will find that all of the drum kits sound and play great right out of the box. With that said, it’s
impossible to have the perfect default v-drum response that will please everyone. There are many reasons for this including the obvious examples of personal preference, sensitivity levels, or threshold levels. However there happen to be a large amount of “not so obvious examples” that will cause problems for both a 500-dollar V-Drum kit and 5000-dollar V-Drum kit alike. In the following paragraph these “not so obvious examples” will be explained and how to fix the problems associated with them.
Not So Obvious Reasons Your V-Drums May Have
Issues with SSD
Drum Head Tuning
If you don’t use V-Drums with mesh heads you can skip this section but for the users who use electronic drum pads with mesh heads you will want to make sure to read on.
Unfortunately one of the main advantages of using mesh head V-Drums is also responsible for a large amount of problems associated with V-Drum playability issues. The advantage mentioned above is the ability to tune mesh heads.
If you have been is the nasty situation where you can’t seem to get a certain v-drum pad to respond like it should even after a large amount of time is spent going back and fourth between sensitivity, threshold and other
settings with no effective result being produced in the end, one of the most likely reasons behind this problem is that your V-Drum is tuned
incorrectly.
Head Is Too Loose
When the tension over the head of a v-drum is displaced, the ability for the internal drum sensor to respond to hits accurately is dramatically hindered. If the head is too loose you run into the problem of actually hitting the
delicate sensor to hard which can cause miss-triggers, unrealistic trigger response and most detrimental of all, your sensor being permanently damaged.
It’s hard to know when this happens so when the sensor does become damaged a lot of time may be wasted troubleshooting other possible
reasons to the drum pads malfunction until your head eventually explodes. You also run the risk of ripping your mess head. So it’s a good idea test how easy it is to push the sensor down through middle of the mesh head. The sensor should always barely be touching the head at all time and is normal.
Head Is Too Tight
Alternatively, you can tune a head so tight that the sensor isn’t even being triggered when hitting the drum. This happens mostly new drum pads or pads with new heads on them more than. The reason this happens can be hopefully explained with this horrible analogy:
Striking Position and Placement of Hits
A common issue that affects the playability and output response of the V- Drums for some people, is that the position in which they hit a certain drum or cymbal pad is incorrect.
This is not to imply that they are playing drums incorrectly, but rather that they are missing sensors found in certain areas of a drum pad or
accidentally hitting sensors they didn’t know were there. Following is a list of suggestions with regard to this problem
Suggestion On Where and How to Hit Certain Drum Pads.
Roland PD-100/105/120/125
Some of these Snare/Tom Pads have the Rim-Shot sensor location on only one side of the drum and can only trigger accurate Rim-Shots when played on this side. To fully utilize the rim-shot you may have to have your v- drum rotated differently than you or your snare stand is used too. Your logo on the head may not be going the correct direction but at least you’ll be hitting those rim-shots correctly.
Certain Cymbal Pads That Have a Bell Sensor
Some Ride and Crash V-Drum Pads have the bell sensor located only in a particular area of the bell, usually directly facing you, which could be a
problem for some people whose playing style or Cymbal placement has them hitting the far right, far left or even the back. One thing to remember is that for the most part, the sensor is usually found directly across the cymbal from the Roland Logo. This goes for Crash Cymbal Sensors.
In general try to make it a habit of reading the manuals that are associated with your V-Drum pads. This could save you hours and hours of time troubleshooting problems as well as open your eyes to certain features of the pads you were not currently aware of.
Time and Hardware Malfunction
Like all things, over time v-drums and certain parts within them where out and won’t work as well as they should or stop working all together.
The cones or padding that are found over the sensors in most v-drums are very delicate and will over time be grinded down due to the constant beatings as well unseen environmental factors. Fortunately this padding can be easily replaced yourself and is fairly cheap (20 dollars or so from Roland).
Mesh-heads also wear out and stretch over time and need to be replaced. Once these things have been replaced on your old V-Drums, they should play like the day you purchased them.
Not Accurately Monitoring Your Drums
The last thing to mention is monitoring. How you hear the sounds produced while performing with your V-Drums is very important and is often forgot. V-Drum produced sounds whether through SSD 3.0 tend to be monitored at much quieter volume than a standard acoustic drum kit.
Because of this, some people that are used acoustic drums and then switch to V-Drums tend play much harder than they need to.
The mind expects loud noises and when it doesn’t get them when playing V-Drums, the mind unconsciously tries to compensate by telling your body that you must play harder to achieve the volume levels normally expected. This is mainly a bad habit to have because it could mess up your technique if not careful and also because of the extra force exerted, your V-Drum hardware takes more abuse than it normally should. Just being aware of this problem should help keep it from happening and for most users, will never become a problem
Roland TD-20 Set-Up
To make set-up a snap we suggest you do a “Reset to Factory Settings” on your TD-20. The following Suggestions are what we found to be the
quickest and easiest way to maximize the V-Drum Playability using Steven Slate Drums 3.0. If you enter the settings below and are still not getting the feel you want, we suggest that before you go into the drum-brain settings, that you instead browse the “Not So Obvious Reasons Your V-Drums May Sound and Play Like Crap”. Remember these are just suggestions.
Suggested Settings for the Roland TD-20
GLOBAL SETTINGS
SETUP
- GLOBAL (F2)
- Local Control (OFF) SETUP - CTRL (F3) - HH Note# Border (80) HI-HAT SETTINGS TRIGGER - ADVANCE (F5) - HH Retrig - (10)
- Mask Time - (8) TRIGGER - BASIC (F2) - Threshold - (12) TRIGGER - HI-HAT (F3)
- Foot Splash Sens (-10) - Noise Cancel (2)