So I've had this kit for almost 2 years now, and played it a LOT. I've been in a few bands and played some gigs as a drummer and bass player, but I'm not a professional musician or skilled drummer. The reason I mention it is to say, I know and understand a fair bit about sound and sound quality, and can keep a beat, but not familiar with advanced drumming techniques so I can't comment on that kind of thing.
Setup:
Setup was pretty easy, it's all modular and the frame isn't bad it feels like it wont break easily but requires a lot of fuss to get into a nice position where it actually seems stable. The wiring and modules are easy to connect and as soon as you've done that and plug in a speaker or headphones, you're ready to go!
Quality:
The pads feel quite nice, it's different from a real kit but they're springy enough and after 2 years of regular playing are still in tact (I tend to hit on the harder side).
I really like the kick pedal, it feels pretty good and is quite dynamic.
The high hat is definitely a weak point, the pedal has only 3 stages: open, half open, closed. The problem is by default, on a range of 0-100% depressed, 0-95 is open 95-99.9 is half-open, 99.9-100 is closed, requiring a significant amount of pressure to activate the full-closed sound.
You can trigger the hat closing sound without hitting it by depressing the pedal fully and it works pretty well.
The ride and crash are ok but aren't really dynamic, and the mute is functional but is hard to press quickly (it's just one squishy button so you have to target it quickly and accurately with a finger pinch) and basically just does a quick fade-out.
Sounds / features:
The default sounds are fine, not amazing, not terrible. There's a range of kits and sounds, you can reassign them and change the parameters for each, and by default they all have a reverb effect which you have to toggle when you change kits. Additionally it has a bunch of training songs which are actually not bad to practice to and offer a range of beats and styles, you can also bring an AUX IN so you can play along to your own music while listening on headphones.
The other thing is as far as I can see there's no way to remap the pedals etc so, I'm not sure if you could rig up a double kick, I thought I could use the hat pedal to even just trigger a sounds but it seems not.
Finally, the redemption...
Turns out that this kit can become really really good by making use of the USB MIDI connection and plugging into a drum synth VST or DAW. Here you get to see how this kit could have sounded off the shelf with a slightly better synth/sound module. The dynamic range of the pads, kits and cymbals are actually pretty good it turns out and with a good synth you can really make it sound like a solid kit. Plus the fact that I can integrate it and make some beats then just work directly with them in my DAW makes it a really useful tool for music production.
So, should you buy this kit? If you're considering it, you probably should! I haven't once regret it, but if you're looking for a kit to play for gigs, this probably isn't it...for practice, fun, jamming with friends, music production and most other things? It's a lot of fun!
