Ddrums were launched a couple of years ago at the Frankfurt fair. At that time they seemed to be concentrating mainly on a small, rectangular module/pad which could contain any digitally sampled sound you wanted. They did have an actual electronic drum kit which resembled a practise set, but it didn't appear to be their major product. Since then, they must have realised the enormous potential of their sets and refined them a little. I'm sure the sounds are just the same as they were, but the pads have certainly been the subject of a modicum of research and development. (For my money, their sampled sounds have always been much richer than anybody else's, so didn't need any working upon.)

The Pads

The Ddrum pads are moulded from self-coloured plastic like almost everybody's, but they're unique in that, even though they are bowl-shaped, they have a tunable, drum-type plastic head. This is a factory fitted Remo Ambassador, but any head would fit. A pressed steel, triple flange hoop holds the head in place, while square headed tension screws adjust the 'bounce'. Underneath the head is a layer of foam, and below this is a sheet of metal. Our old friends, the Piezo transducers are set below this plate, and all this rests on the plastic bottom of the top bowl — if you get my drift? Another bowl is fitted below all this which contains a circular chunk of plywood. That's all you need. The actual bottom of the pad is very flying-saucer like but with a large moulded block protruding downwards. This locates the XLR socket and the Ludwig/Premier/Tama-type holder block. (This is the sort of tom leg type block which locates on to an 'L' shaped arm fixed to the top of the stand.) To cut down on mechanical cross-talk the block is rubber mounted to the pad itself. The 'tom' pads are all 10 inch in diameter, while the snare drum is sensibly (I feel) slightly larger at 12 inches. It's also different in that it has two transducers and two outputs. One transducer is fixed 'dead centre' while the other is set at the rim. Thus, the rim may have a sound of its own. (Breaking glass is my favourite.)

The bass drum, or 'Kick' as Ddrum call it is pretty unusual. It isn't a large round, square, or multi sided pad at all. It's simply a couple of pieces of 'box' section tubular steel joined to each other end to end with an angle of divergence equal to 45 degrees. Thus there's a piece of metal sticking up in the air. A pad of rubber with metal backing is fixed via some sort of spring to the open end and this is the part the bass pedal beater strikes against. The Piezo then senses the vibrations and takes them off to the 'brain'. A large plate is fixed at the other end and the foot-pedal actually sits on this whilst clamping in the usual way to the box section itself. A pair of sprung, screw-adjustable spurs are set into the plate to stop the unit from moving away from the rest of the set. There's another XLR to carry the vibrations away to the brain. (The handbook from Ddrum states that it's possible to trigger a single module from two 'kick' units. Unfortunately they don't say how, but since there's only one trigger/pad input I presume you have to join the two outputs from them together at the input jack as with a 'Y' lead. One wonders whether one could achieve this with other manufacturers' electronic drums. It would certainly save on modules!)

The Brain

Ddrum's brain is actually a collection of six modules with a Power supply all set vertically in a small, but rugged flight case. There's room left for extra modules as well as an optional mini mixer, with pots for level and pan. All the drum modules are identical, with potentiometers for Pitch change, Pitch sensitivity, Decay, Bass and Treble. There's also a sensitivity trimmer and two push buttons for selection of up to four different sounds (depending on the capacity of the cartridge being used). With the Pitch 'pot' set in a vertical position the sample will play back at the rate it was sampled, turn it clockwise and it increases the rate and the pitch; and vice versa. Because Ddrums have digitally sampled sounds it's not essential for them to provide an enormous amount of parameter control. (To mess around too drastically with a digital sound is normally a waste of time because it renders it messy and invariably unattractive. Many early digital sets had too much control, but companies soon realised their mistake.)

The back of the 'brain' is where the real business of Ddrum takes place. Here each module is equipped with its own cartridge port to change the sounds. The company have a library of something like 150 sounds inserted into 'B' or 'C' type cartridges. These are strongly constructed from steel, with the former possessing a 16K memory and the latter a 32k one for even longer sounds. The brochure lists not less than eight different snare drum sounds some of which are echoed and some electronic. Five bass drums are available (four on one cartridge) and lots of other diverse sounds. (Garbage container meets hammer is intriguing, as is Splash I). It's a piece of cake to change these sounds at will, and you can buy them for £48 for type 'B' with 0.6 secs of memory, or £85 for the larger one with twice as much. Below these ports are jack sockets for Audio out and Trig in. Of course it's possible to trigger Ddrum's brain from an external source like a drum machine or sequencer.

The Sounds

Very impressive. As Ddrum say in their catalogue 'The digital sampling of drums is not an easy business, but it has been our business..." They make a very good job of it too. If you aren't happy with any of the 150 sounds on offer, you can just send along a recording of the sound you want and they'll encapsulate it for you. I was told that Kenney Jones is having all his normal drum sounds digitally recorded and Ddrum are 'blowing' them into their chips for him. I also heard that Max Weinberg's sounds are all sampled and that Ddrums are actually hiding inside his acoustic drums. Interesting is it not?

The Feel

The feel of the pads is not too shabby, although somewhat 'spongy' like a good practise set. The bass drum, or rather the Kick feels just like the real thing to me. You can't adjust this, but replacement 'pads' or Piezos are available at a price.

In Conclusion

One of the reasons that drummers have been slow to be turned on to Ddrum is because they haven't really had a distributor here. The manufacturer responsible for them is called Clavia, based in Sweden; so obviously they need to have someone here to take care of business. The Complex is among other things a rehearsal studio in London W14 which used to be called Nomis, and they have become the distributors for Ddrum. They are ideally placed to demonstrate the more sophisticated (ie expensive) equipment to their customers while they're there rehearsing. Ddrum is, it must be said, a very high priced item which any normal music store would have to think hard about stocking. However, The Complex don't seem to be perturbed by this daunting factor. All you need to do is call them up and they'll arrange a demo for you.

The set does not include stands, and you can have any colour you like so long as it's white or black.

DDRUM — 5 ELECTRONIC DRUMS — RRP £2,085 (EX. VAT)