Yamaha DTXPRESS Drum Machines

 

 

If you like a large volume of sounds, then you would love the compact Yamaha DTXpress Drum Machine. Every type of sound that you would want to have, like snare, kick, tom, hi-hat, cymbals and percussion are produced by this machine.

In addition, it also has a great variety of percussion sounds, GM effects, and voices. Another attractive feature about this unit is that it has 90 built-in songs that you can learn as you play along. It also allows you to learn difficult and complex drum beats by muting one part of the drum at a time while playing a song and play the beat yourself. Of the many drum kits available in this, 48 are preset and 49 – 80 are available for you to edit.

This works out to making available 80 different kits for you to use in any combination and style of playing. You could record your drum tracks using the built in sequencer through MIDI. You can do this using the keyboard, guitar or bass. It is possible to change sounds, adjust volume, effects, velocity, pan, gain and velocity of any one sound.

 

This module offers even more. It has a very accurate responsive trigger system which includes five TP60 drum pads for snare, kick and tom; two PCY60 cymbal pads for crash and ride; and one hi-hat control pedal and a kick pedal. It is also possible to use the hi-hat pedal as another kick for a double bass set up.

Since I like to have two crashes and a ride, I used to use one tom pad as ride and both cymbal pads for crashes. This seemed to work because the tom pad was firm enough and was good for the ride. However, I had only one tom pad and this made for a minor difficulty. I had to make an extra snare pad myself to get three tom pads, and two crashes.

I learnt how to make my own snare pad from an excellent web site. I can now use this to play module to play at church services and indulge in rock and roll during practice sessions. The module is excellent for recordings. It can be easily accommodated on the back seat of the extended cab, making easy to take along to where ever we perform.

The main drawback with this is that it comes with only a single trigger pad. It would be nice to have two trigger pads. However, it is capable of having dual trigger pads. Perhaps adding another trigger pad would have increased the cost of production. One other problem I have with this is that the rack system is not of the best quality and some adjustments are necessary to prevent shaking while playing.

It is also necessary to see to it that the "T" connectors are always well lubricated to prevent them getting from getting jammed. The quality of construction is quite good, perhaps rating 4 on a scale of 1 – 5.Yamaha should include an additional cross brace to make the rack stable. They have done this for their larger modules. Finally, I would say that this is an excellent kit for players at all levels. The price of this module has come down to $800 at present. This is certainly the best buy at this price, and you cannot do any better.