AFTER LAST MONTH'S dalliance with wood and skin we rocket back into the 80s with the arrival of yet another electronic drum kit. The current profusion of models recall those far off days when the home video first became available. As well as rival manufacturers insisting on promoting their own formats (Phillips, VHS, Betamax), every other vacant shop suddenly became a video tape store, bursting with enthusiasm and hire-titles to suit the arm chair film buff (Sound Of Music, Texas Chainsaw Massacre etc).

It was obvious that sooner or later one format would emerge at the expense of the others, as the most popular, and that once the initial surge of novelty business had tailed off, demand could never support so many hire outlets on a long term basis. Sure enough today's video operation revolves around VHS and a more modest number of high street stores.

This is an important lesson for anyone with limited funds and an interest in electronic drums. Value for money is only the first of your concerns. You also have to ask yourself whether or not a particular maker will still be in business in a couple of years time. Will they have withstood concerted competition or rapidly changing fashion when your kit needs repair or spares?

Manufacturers who survive on modest funds will dread the appearance of a kit from a large established company like Pearl, with its access to large capital funds and its impressive backup credentials. They were, after all, the first Japanese company to export drums to the UK and thus break the monopoly of Premier and the Americans, and they have continued successfully to compete with all-comers ever since... about 12 years to the best of my memory.

The same pioneering spirit has produced the DRX-1 because Pearl are first of the traditional makers to produce a serious electronic kit. Yamaha may have developed the RX11 and the RX15 drum machines, but Pearl are ahead of the pack in boldly going where only Dave Simmons and imitators have gone before.

I suppose that Simmons should be flattered that the Japanese have maintained their tradition of analysing what they see as the best product on the market and then trying to improve upon it by basing the DRX-1 on elements of both the SDS5 and the SDS7, but I doubt that their marketing department will see it that way.

As you can see in the illustration, the five DRX pads approach a certain hexagonal shape, but they conceal circular playing areas which are made of two layers of rubber, one hard, one soft. This is an important aspect of the electronic kit. Simmons have worked hard to improve the feel of their pads from the jarring hard discomfort of the SDS5 to the rubbery 'bok' of the SDS7 and 8. If anything the DRX is even more pleasant to the touch of the stick, slightly softer and more responsive to traditional strokes, more silent in sound terms and triggering right across its surface with reasonable dynamic response. The casing is made of a substance described to me by Pearl UK as a 'sort of hi-tech plastic', and who am I to argue with such informed opinion?

The bass drum pad also owes more than a little to the Simmons with its shape and lookalike spurs, but again hides differences in its playing surface. All second generation Simmons pads are uniformly made, the bass drum version simply being bigger than those for snare or toms. The DRX differs in this respect by trying to simulate the feel of a real bass drum head with rubber which is harder than the snare and tom pads but softer than the Simmons. It is reinforced with a circular target area for the beater which looks as though it will resist the most club-footed of players. With this in mind, the bracket to which the chosen pedal is attached is extremely well made, so if your DRX pad is grabbed by an excited band member and unceremoniously slung out into the audience, don't worry. Simply grab its lead and reel it back in. It should arrive in one piece.

Much the same can be said of the hardware, the irony of which is that it used to support the pads of the SDS5. So you don't just have to take my word for it when I say that I have always had a high regard for Pearl stands and pedals which combine overall carryability with strength, flexibility and good balance.

The stands pictured are from the top of the range 900 series and include the new TH95 tom holders which can be angled even more acutely than their predecessors. These work well with the equally improved three-way adaptors, one of which now does the job of two old types and which can be tightened by hand on a wing nut rather than the tuning key needed for the former model.

Now all this is very well, but what you really want to know is: what does the kit sound like and how easy is it to program? The short answer to which is: like the SDS5 and very. To go into greater detail we have to get to grips with the control module.

This is a swish looking affair, slim, black and a rack-mountable 19½ins with a noticeable lack of knobs. The SDS7 has one big one, the SDS8 lots of medium sized ones and the DRX two small ones, which control headphone and line output (a great inclusion which means that you can play along on headphones with music of your choice and balance). And there are the five tiny ones that cover the sensitivity of the five pads to stick or beater. The idea being that once you have set the degree of response you then leave it, although there is nothing to mark that point other than the use of chinagraph or piece of tape. That seems a pity since these things can be moved by accident, and fiddling madly with such small knobs halfway through a gig is the last thing any drummer needs.

Other than that, the system is controlled by buttons. To select a kit sound you press one of the group of buttons numbered 1 to 8. Here we find the DRX's most valuable element — eight different sets of kit sounds to play with rather than one of the two on the SDS8. Kits 1 to 7 will be factory presets (which were yet to be determined when I saw the test kit), but all eight can be reprogrammed to your own taste (unlike the Ultimate percussion kit's eight digital presets).

This is simply achieved by switching the three-way memory protection function on the back panel. Set to 'Full', it will prevent accidental loss of all eight kits; middle position guards kits 1 to 7 (the presets), and 'Off' will allow you to reprogram any kit.

While on the back panel we pause to note that connections to the module from the pads are all jacks as are: the separate outputs for each drum sound; the overall stereo output (one of which can be used for a mono feed); and the extra stereo line-in pair (for the playing-along-with-music-on-headphones function).

There are also two DIN sockets, one for an external trigger and one for an as yet undisclosed kit selector, which will possibly be a footswitching device but which won't have to try very hard to beat the SDS7 version, the small hexagons of which are hard enough to see, let alone hit, during the mayhem of noise and flashing lights commonly known as a gig.

Having set the pad sensitivity, which activates an LED from one to four, and disarmed the memory protection for kit one (which registers on a lighted panel), we press the 'KIT 1' button and another panel lights up the number one. We can now hear kit one and, plugging into a nearby amp, bash the pads accordingly. Being analogue sounds, rather than digital versions of real drums, these bear a strong resemblance to the SDS5 and 8. The thunderous fizz of oscillators is what we have here. Changing them is a simple and speedily acquired procedure.

There are eight parameters which we can play with and they are laid out in another lit panel from left to right as: Pitch, Bend, Overtone, Attack, Filter, Decay and Level. Each has an arrow underneath it which points up, for more of that element, or down for less. Next to all this is a panel which will show the value of the parameter you're working on and how much of it you have at that moment.

So let's say you want to fiddle with the bass drum sound. Above the parameter panel is another section which contains five segments divided into Snare, Bass, Tom 1, Tom 2 and Tom 3. At the moment there is a light showing above the snare segment meaning that the snare can currently be programmed. To get to the bass drum you go to the two pad buttons, one of which has an arrow pointing left, another right. One press on the right arrow button and the light on the pad panel moves to the bass drum. So far so good.

To get to each parameter you go to the two parameter buttons, which also show respective arrows, and press left or right to make the parameter panel light move to the segment that you're interested in. Having homed in on, say, the Pitch (left arrow button), you look at the value panel and see a number between 0 and 19. These are the minimum and maximum increments that you can work between. If the number shows ten but you want lower pitch, you go to the two Value buttons with their up and down pointing arrows. Press the down arrow, the corresponding arrow on the Pitch panel lights up and the number decreases, one digit for each press.

Numerically controlled programming is simple and efficient, helps the fledgling electro-drummer to understand how sounds actually work and are made up, and is therefore more useful in the long run than haphazard knob twiddling. Nought to 19 is adequate variation (not in the same league as the nought to 240 on the SDS7, but not meant to be), but be warned that nought does not mean off altogether which can be limiting if you want to create non drum sounds. If you do want the standard drum sound, the Overtone parameter is very useful, however, though overall I would have to say that as new boys in this field Pearl haven't yet defined their individual sound components as well as Simmons.

I would take my hat off to Pearl for any electronic kit that they produced simply because of the courage and enterprise involved in removing their heads from the sand where most of the other traditional makers are still hiding.

I can't tell you how good the presets will be when this kit hits the shops but I'm not sure it matters. You should work on your own sounds regardless and here you have eight chances to do so with a cleverly thought-out process which should frighten no-one. Add that to thorough structural quality and you have great value for money. Do bear in mind that the price quoted here is maximum mark-up. Pearl think that dealers will be placing it closer to the SDS8 and you can always economise further by choosing stands from the cheaper 800 or 700 ranges. Roll over Cactus and tell Dave Simmons the news.

DRX 1 electronic drums: £1020

CONTACT: Pearl Music Ltd, 11 Garamonde Drive, Wybush, Milton Keynes MK8 8DF. Tel: 0908 564956.