A few days ago a good friend of mine suggested I buy him some new drums for Rock Band for his birthday.  He’s a bit of a cheeky bleeda’, with some very strange ideas, but the drums he pointed out looked really cool.

As it happens, my own Rock Band drums just suffered a pedal-snap so those were in need of repair or replacement.

The drum kit in question is the Ion "Drum Rocker", and I was sufficiently intrigued by what I read on the product’s web site, and in various reviews, that I decided to buy a set for myself (for his birthday).

Anyone that has played with the standard Rock Band drums for any length of time is well aware of their pros and cons.  On the upside they are no-fuss, and are relatively affordable.  On the down side, the bass-drum pedal is prone to failure, typically snapping in half or at the hinge, there is very little room for adjustment (height only) and you need to whack them pretty solidly to ensure they register.

Oh yes, and they make an infernal racket when hit … so you’re very unlikely to actually hear the drum sounds from the game while you’re busy playing.  I might be exaggerating a little here, but not much.

You can, if you’re so inclined, purchase official Rock Band drum "silencers" (third-party options also exist).  These are, in my experience, easy to install, look good and are very effective in deadening the sound of the standard drums.  Sadly they are even more effective at deadening the responsiveness of the drums themselves, so they’re not something I can recommend.

The pedal issue is relatively easy to work around as well, either before or after it breaks, but I’ll write more about that when the upgrade/repair arrives and I give it a try on my current broken pedal.

Harmonix have announced new drums with Rock Band 2, which may improve things somewhat, but while the standard product is more than serviceable, and quite entertaining, the Ion "Drum Rocker" steps things up several notches.  You would expect it to offer more than the standard "instrument" of course, on the basis it is more than three times as expensive.

The first surprise, for me at least, was that it came in obviously officially licensed packaging.  I had read several reviews and had come to the conclusion that this was a standard, basic, set of electronic drum pads and cymbals, that just happened to come with an Xbox 360/Rock Band licensed interface.

You certainly can use these pads and cymbals with a conventional drum sound module or "brain", they are velocity sensitive and use standard 1/4" connectors.  In fact the Ion setup seems to have some similarity to the Alesis DM5 Pro kit, and is compatible with the Alesis DM5 Drum Module.

The set is configured and color coded for Rock Band/Rock Band 2 however, and there is no special work required of the user to make things work they way you would expect them to.

Setting Up:

Setup is pretty straight-forward and the short and simple setup leaflet, combined with the supplied square nut driver, is all that is needed to get up and running.  The only thing lacking in the instructions is a proper indication of which side of the arms the wing-nuts go (the outside).  It becomes pretty obvious as you put things together – but that was the only thing that gave me any pause while setting up.

There are quite a few pieces, since you have the horizontal base pieces, vertical supports, cross piece and the two side arms.  Then there are the cymbal arms, the four drum pads, the two cymbals, bass pedal and the control unit to put in place. The quality of construction seems very high, feels extremely solid, and has a satisfying heft to it.

Running the cables, with their gold-plated connectors (nice attention to detail), is also very quick and simple, and the set includes more cable-ties than you are likely to need.  I ran my cables around the supports rather than tying them off, and that both looks neat and makes it easier to move things later.

The pads, cymbals and pedal alls connect into a controller or "brain", and that houses the Xbox 360 interface and game-pad style controls.  The Drum Rocker is a wired instrument, and while wireless support is always a bonus, it is much less of an issue for drums than it is for guitar controllers.  Particularly as the controller connects to the Xbox 360 via a generous 4 meter (~13 feet, if you can only think in imperial units) cable.

All in all setting it up, and then adjusting everything (since everything is adjustable on this kit except the pedal) took about an hour from first opening the box to playing my first song in Rock Band.

Playing:

The first song I played in Rock Band to test the Drum Rocker was nothing less than a revelatory experience!  It was immediately apparent that this was a vast improvement over the standard drums.  Even without taking the time to adjust to the new spacing and feel, I was having a much easier time hitting the notes reliably.  My scores improved immediately, and have continued to get better with practice.

The very first thing I noticed was how much quieter the drums are.  The difference is huge!  And while you can hear the sticks on the pads, it is both a quieter and much softer noise that lets you know you’ve hit the pad without getting in the way of the music.

The pads are extremely responsive, and even if you miss the pad and hit the rim instead they will generally respond.  They have excellent feel and just the right amount of bounce, due in part, I expect, to the great looking/feeling and seemingly very durable rubber-like material that covers them.  I found myself bouncing the sticks and double-hitting notes occasionally … which was entirely down to over-zealous playing – something necessary with the ordinary drums.

I should stress that the pads were not double-registering a single hit … I was bouncing the sticks so I actually hit the pad twice.  That problem went away rapidly as I got used to their feel and bounce.

At 8" in diameter, the pads are a littler larger than the standard Rock Band drum pads, making them an easier target – although this also results in the spacing being a little different, and that took a few minutes to adjust to.

So the drum pads are excellent, and on their own well worth the price of admission!

The kick-drum/bass-drum pedal on the original Rock Band drums has been a point of contention for a lot of people.  I am, frankly, surprised mine lasted as long as it did, but a week ago while playing with some friends it finally gave up and snapped at the hinge.

One look at the Drum Rocker pedal and you can tell it is an entirely different beast.  It is all-metal, very solid, has a lighter action and feels fantastic in use.  It has spikes for securing it into carpet (it comes with Velcro pads as well), but so far I have not found the need to use either … the pedal stays wherever I put it, no matter how enthusiastically I stomp it.  It makes hitting fast sequences of beats a lot easier than with the old pedal, and on top of that there is supposed to be an accessory pedal coming for double-pedal configurations.

So another thumbs up for the pedal.  That just leaves the cymbals …

The cymbals are a nice addition to the standard setup.  I am not sure how much I will really use them in Rock Band/Rock Band 2, since they just duplicate the functionality of the pads.  So far I am playing them more for "immersion" than for any actual benefit to my score or ease of play.  They may be more necessary in the soon-to-be-released Guitar Hero: World Tour, we will have to see.

Most of the reviews I had read about the Drum Rocker have mentioned that the cymbals need to be hit a bit harder than the pads.  In some cases I’ve read that they need to be hit a LOT harder.  For mine, while they do need more of a whack than the pads, it is not a big issue, and certainly not detrimental to the enjoyment, immersion or practicality of using them.

The interesting thing for me here was after seeing how another (professional) electronic drum set was assembled at a local Guitar Center.  That was setup with a lot of play in the cymbals – so the wing-nut holding them onto their stands was looser and the cymbal could move about.  So I tried that on the Drum Rocker cymbals and it seems to have made a difference.  It took a little bit of playing around to find the right level of looseness so that they were more responsive, without them double registering – but it is easy to do and seems to have been worthwhile.  Not that it was problematic before.

Another interesting aspect to the cymbals is how they work in Rock Band 2′s "Drum Trainer".  In the regular game they just replicate the yellow and green pads (or whichever inputs you’ve connected them to, there are three cymbal inputs).  In the "Drum Trainer" however, even though it still only shows the five regular notes, if you hit the yellow cymbal it sounds like a cymbal and the yellow drum pad sounds like a drum.  The same is true for the other two cymbal inputs.  So the game and the brain is obviously aware of the differences!

This is an important factor for compatibility with Guitar Hero: World Tour, since it has discrete recognition for drums vs. cymbals.  I don’t know yet, if the Drum Rocker will be compatible with the new Guitar Hero, but given the flexibility of input mapping, and the obvious ability for the unit to discern between drum and cymbal inputs, I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t fully compatible.

I do expect that you’ll need to swap inputs around a little to make things play the right notes, but it seems unlikely that you won’t be able to come up with a compatible configuration.

I am going to go ahead and purchase the optional third-cymbal, just for completeness, and because at some point I plan on using this set up to provide drum input for Apple‘s Logic Studio.

Lastly there are the included drum-sticks.  Think of these as being included because they had to … they’re similar to the normal Rock Band sticks, without the logos on them.  They work fine, but they feel out of place when you look at the rest of the kit.  After a little testing with them to make sure there were no issues, I immediately replaced them with a set of nylon-tipped 5A sticks.

Final Thoughts:

Overall the Ion Drum Rocker set up is fantastic and I am extremely pleased with the kit.  I would not hesitate to purchase it again and absolutely recommend it to anyone that wants to improve their drumming experience in Rock Band.  So far I have not missed a single note that wasn’t definitively my fault – not something I would even think, much less say, about the standard drums.

Pros:

• Dramatically improved pad responsiveness.
• Great pad feel and bounce.
• Much quieter than the standard Rock Band drums.
• Excellent, all-metal, bass-pedal.
• Solid, durable, construction.
• Looks fantastic.
• Works even better than it looks.

Cons:

• The $300 price tag, while worth it, probably puts the Ion Drum Rocker out of most people’s reach.
• The unit takes up more space than the normal Rock Band drums.
• There is no quick way to fold up or take down the Drum Rocker for temporary storage.
• Don’t care for the included drum-sticks.

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