This isn't the first time we've scrutinised a Cactus drum set. But it's the first we've done since C-tape developments acquired the ailing company in late 1984. The new owners immediately began to put right some of the things which were felt to be holding the product back. We'll discuss these points as we come to them, but I'm told that in the short time that C-tape have been involved they've managed to sell their product in Europe and North America.

The big difference between this and the mark one Cactus sets is the sounds. The originals had analogue bass drum and toms with digitally sampled snare. These have all their sounds digitally sampled and then encapsulated in EPROM. So, as I've mentioned before, every time you hit the pad outcomes a real snare drum. The EPROMs which Cactus are using are known as 2764s. This means they have 64k worth of memory which is more than enough for a short sound such as bass, snare or tom. Cactus also make cymbal and hi hat modules as add ons, and these require a great deal more memory to reproduce their whole rich sound. So, 4 x 2764s are used for each. Cactus have done all the work on the chips themselves via Sony PCM and Fairlight and done a pretty good job. (I mention the fact that they've done the job themselves, because these days there are several companies which will blow chips to order for you.)

The biggest problem with the old Cactus (to me) was that the pads were simply too flimsy. Not only did they flex when you hit them, it was all too easy to make the 'L' shaped rod on the holding stand push up through the pad as you hit and ultimately force the two pieces apart. This can't happen anymore since they've redesigned the pads and screwed the 'lid' to the bottom. Inside the pad is a circular piece of dense, flight-case interior type foam. There's an 'O' ring too held inside the pad to allow it to be mounted to a Premier/Tama/Ludwig type double tom holder stand and, of course, our old friend the Piezo transducer. In Cactus' case this pickup is mounted close to the edge of the pad and not too far from the holding mechanism. The other end of this 'O' ring has a screw thread and one of Premier's old-style large wing-nuts complete with internal loose nut. The pads are still wedge shaped with an XLR socket to take the pad's vibrations to the brain and translate them into digital sounds. The small pads which simulate toms and snare measure just about 12" in diameter and are 2" deep at their thickest. They have a piece of rubber set into them to act as a playing surface which has a diameter of 19". The bass drum is, as per usual, much larger than the others and in Cactus' case is based on a square with a 20" side. There's a radius to each corner which is formed from an 18" circle. The bass pad is not wedge shaped and is a constant 2½" thick. A piece of 'L' shaped metal is fitted to the very bottom of the pad to jack it up and allow any bass drum pedal to fit. A pair of spiked, tubular spurs are fitted and these locate into newly strengthened 'O' rings hidden deep inside the pad. (There was a tendency for the bass pad to flex as you hit it, but this feature has been eradicated by fitting strong metal plates at the spur mounting points.) This set is the first I've seen which has optional rubber or spike ended spurs. The front of the old bass pad used to have a cactus moulded into it but C-tape have changed this.

The Brain

Cactus' brain is also something of a mixer. It looks exactly the same as the old one with an array of pots set on top of a wedge shaped board with wooden end cheeks. The whole board measures 18" x 18½" x 8" including the end fillets. It was meant to be capable of rack mounting and you could if you so desired. However, it would need a pretty strange case. I think it's more convenient to rest it on top of a flight case, certainly it would be less awkward.

All the pad inputs are situated on the thick edge of the unit at the back and even if you buy the usual five drum set you'll be supplied with ten inputs for when you decide to add other voices to your set. Also on that back edge we have an input for the hi hat pedal (to open and close it) with a left and right stereo 'out' (We can, of course, use one of these sockets for mono and pan the signal accordingly.)

For a five drum set up we have bass, snare and three toms all mounted on the same plate. However, when we add voices these are single modules and slot in accordingly. To the extreme left of the mixer we have a power LED, a rotary potentiometer to control stereo output and an extremely useful jack socket complete with control knob for headphones. This of course means that you can use the Cactus as a practise set too; without annoying the rest of your family. The next row of switches controls the snare drum. The knobs run from North to South and we have more for this voice than for toms and bass. Snare drum has a filter section too so we can add analogue sounds to the original digitally sampled ones. So, we can adjust frequency and resonance as well as adding white noise. Otherwise all the channels are identical with knobs to control volume, pan, pitch, decay and sensitivity. The bass drum has not one, but two switchable sounds encapsulated on a single chip and each channel has a trigger light. This is useful not just to show that the pad is working and plugged into the correct input, but also to adjust sensitivities of adjacent pads. Often one will hit one pad only to find another sounding at the same time. It's then necessary to adjust the sensitivity of the pad you aren't hitting until its light is extinguished.

Each row of buttons has a jack socket at its very top which is each voice's individual output. It's possible to join (say) clap trap output to snare drum input and get the best of both worlds. (It's also possible to insert an effect into the line in this way to change the sound on a single voice.) Cactus thoughtfully incorporate an earth lifter to help eliminate mains hum.

The voices

The snare drum voice is the same one which was on the mark one Cactus. It is very bright but with the capability via its filter section to be almost anything your heart desires. The bass drum(s) sound is also very strong; it can be changed drastically by simply adjusting the pitch control and it would appear that sample one has more click than sample two. I have a slight 'beef with the two sounds. It isn't possible to switch between the samples without adjusting the controls. What I mean is that if bass drum one is set up to sound good, bass drum two will not without a degree of adjustment. Under those circumstances it seems ridiculous to make the two voices switchable. The toms are much better than before. Each voice has its own chip, but they're all identical. The sample has simply been speeded-up, or perhaps slowed down for the different toms. Anyway, there's a really good roar to the actual sample before you add anything to it.

I said that alternative voices are available for the Cactus. The company will supply you with modules to plug into your mixer/brain for hi hat, crash, ride, hand clap and synth-drum. As I said the cymbal modules have four chips inside and correspondingly cost almost £120 each. The hi hat comes with a footpedal and lists at £149. The synth module is £99 and the remainder: cowbell, cabasa, octaves, claps and tambourine are £89 each. All the sounds are very good. The cymbals are very convincing apart from a cut-off point on the crash after a couple of seconds. Unfortunately, without using more costly memory, it's impossible to do anything about this. I still prefer analogue claps to digital, but Cactus' is not bad at all. (Could they have sampled analogue claps?) The pitch change pot really does make for very interesting cymbal sounds, eg you can persuade the crashes to sound like gongs or splashes at each extreme of pitch-change.

That synth module I mentioned earlier is the same sort of thing which one finds on the majority of synthesized drum sets. It can be set up to be anything you want and has a unique feature which allows you to add the sound of the pad to the synth and give even more click. It's unusual and works well.

I purposely have not discussed the stands, this is because the price quoted doesn't include them. However, C-tape will supply some Taiwanese stands but I understand they would prefer your dealer to put you right on that subject.

Resurrected

So, the Cactus electronic drum company has been resurrected and would appear to be in good hands. The things which I disliked about them would appear to have been put right and the price is reasonably reasonable. The company supply leads and things for their product, and should you want to trigger the brain from another source or different pads, you may buy one on its own for just under £600.

I've got to go now because the pubs are open, but before I do I'll tell you about something else I saw in Aldershot at the C-tape factory. The company's other product is a microphone system which consists of a piece of tape available in two lengths which one simply attaches to one's acoustic instrument with double-sided tape. A thin lead carries the sound off to a pre-amp which is then interfaced with some sort of PA system or instrument amplifier. This system has always worked very well and over the three or four years since I last tested it it has been improved even more. The preamp has an unbalanced and a balanced output which is most convenient and there's a trimmer underneath the box which adjusts from mike to line. This is all by way of setting-up for you their latest product which I saw a prototype of. It's to be called APT which stands for acoustic percussion trigger. It will enable the affluent acoustic drummer to not only amplify his drums without cumbersome mikes, but also to trigger an electronic brain, be it digital or analogue, and mix the two sounds together. Of course it has sort of been possible to do this before but necessitated two mikes for each drum and an awful lot of expense with an American product which is made by a company called Marc. This unit will spike the signal coming via the microphone so that an electronic sound-shaper will be able to cope with it. All this, however, is a thing of the past. For £389 C-ducer will supply us with five of their strip microphones and a control box which will trigger and pass on the audio signal. The spike I spoke of which changes audio to trigger is controllable, and you don't have to go into a synthesized or digital drum brain, you can also play a Linn if you so desire or a Drumulator via a different socket which is matched to that equipment's plus or minus level. I'm convinced that APT is a significant breakthrough and if there's any justice will prove to be the greatest thing since oven chips.

CACTUS ELECTRONIC 5 DRUM SET - RRP: £749