Warren Cann, Ultravox percussionist and E&MM consultant, takes a special look at this kit update.

One year ago, Honky Tonk Music conceived and designed the original Klone Kit, using the well known Remo RPS/10 practice kit. Selling at £299 it offered for the first time an affordable alternative to the conventional drum kit. Although demand exceeded supply, criticism of the 'practice kit' was voiced by those who desired a more robust and visual system. It was therefore decided in July of this year to completely redesign the unit. The Klone-Kit 2 has custom-built heavy duty hardware, made by the French drum company Capelle.

With octagonal, 3-dimensional pads in ABS plastic with special composite white rubber playing surfaces, a full control section with LED indication, line outputs, headphone monitoring and comprehensive snare section for special effects, the Klone-Kit 2 is available in red, black and white. The whole outfit comes in a Le Blond fibre case, complete with leads, at £499.
Pete Brewer, Honky Tonk Music.

The 'Klone Kit 2' is Honky Tonk Music's new model electronic drum kit based on their initial 'Klone Kit' which was reviewed in E&MM in February '83.

Basically, this British endeavour attempts to improve upon the limitations of a practise pad kit that has had pick-ups mounted on it; I understand that the 'Klone Kit' has been quite successful and I salute those responsible for giving drummers the means with which to practise without unduly disturbing others and a reasonably viable way of recording, usually in the same, decibel sensitive, domestic surroundings.

The Klone One retailed for £300, no small change by any means, but a reasonable price indeed for the latitude it gave a musician who had no options open to him when it came to unpleasant scenes with neighbours, the police, and landlords. At that price I'm sure not too many beginners chose the Klone Kit over the real thing but at least having one choice where before there was none in making progress...

Encouraged by success and having made inroads with an ever increasing (i.e. previously overlooked) market, Honky Tonk have made a sincere effort at improving their product. The concept has been expanded until what we now have falls neatly between two camps: the 'Simmons' kit, and electro-practice pad set-ups. Whether or not this is, in fact, a better mouse-trap remains to be seen, however.

The 'Klone Kit 2' consists of five pads, each with crystal pick-up, mounted on a central tree. The tree itself is a vast improvement over its predecessor because now it's a metal stand, with adjustable, triangular legs akin to a heavy-duty tom or cymbal stand. Each pad has a jack socket to connect a lead to the electronics module which perches at the top of the assembly. Analogue circuitry gives you a bass drum, snare drum, and three tom-toms to work with. You supply your own bass drum pedal and amplification, which is standard, but The Klone Kit 2 does come with its own 'traps' type carrying case which I find a most thoughtful addition.

The pads themselves seem to be of robust construction, the cases are moulded out of some variety of tough looking plastic which is available in black, red, or white; The actual playing surface of the pad is some sort of hard rubber compound which still gives a pleasing resiliency to stick-action. It's non-tensionable which I find a relief - systems which place a transducer underneath a standard drum skin, complete with tension rods, seem utterly redundant to me. The Klone Kit's playing surface is perfectly acceptable in terms of bounce and does away with all of the clutter and expense of hardware. I'm aware of complaints from some quarters concerning the hard, plastic playing surface of the Simmons pads but I've never found it a problem. It's partially psychological - if you have adequate amplification (which I'm sad to say most drummers don't), for monitoring then you'd be truly surprised how stick rebound from the Simmons' type pads can change in relationship to volume. As the volume increases the 'feel' of the pad becomes more and more like a drum and less and less like a hard, unyielding surface.

Underneath each pad unit there's a threaded metal socket to take the end of an elbow-joint swivel similar to the top of a cymbal stand. This is connected to a chrome rod which is, in turn, connected to a boom-stand type of swivel which is itself attached to the main tree. I like the large lever handle used here to tighten the connection, it's simpler than a large wing-nut, and looks more than strong enough to do its job.

Once all of the pads are in their desired positions the whole thing is fairly sturdy, but none of the hardware is of the current heavy-duty-scaffolding variety so I do have my doubts as to how well the unit will stand up under the conditions of a live gig where one tends to put far more muscle into playing. With kits like these, sledgehammer technique is absolutely uncalled for and, in most instances, is probably only a last resort due to inadequate amplification. I mean, if you can't hear yourself or if it's not loud enough to physically get into the groove of what you're playing, then it's perfectly natural to just hit the damn things harder. Even the apparent indestructability of the Simmons pads falls prey to this - mine keeps disintegrating when other people get their hands on them, and that's the same plastic that riot shields are made of.

Once everything is positioned to your liking you connect each pad unit to the central control module using ordinary jack-to-jack leads. Each 'drum' has an input and a line out. There's a main output socket and a headphone socket. It's suggested that you take one output from the bass drum and run it separately from the others which you take from the main output but, of course, if you're in the studio or doing a live gig you can take each separately for maximum control of equalisation and any possible effects such as reverb, flanging, phasing, etc. Plus the tremendous advantages offered due to a headphone output are self-evident!

All of those leads aren't quite as tidy as they could be, but it is simple and it helps keep the overall cost down. Once your favourite playing position has been determined for each unit it's no big deal to just tailor the length of each lead for its intended use and 'snake' it to the hardware with Gaffa tape or even the wire twists that you seal plastic bags with.

The controls are simple, clearly laid out and easy to understand. The bass drum, high tom, mid tom, and low tom all have three controls each; an individual volume, a tuning control for pitch, and a dampening control to shorten or lengthen the sustain of the drum.

The snare drum is afforded more control and I was very impressed with the quality of sound one can get out of it. It's divided neatly into two, the drum sound itself (identical to a tom-tom if the snare side is turned off), and the snare sound which is the white noise element. Each has the same three tune/damp/volume controls of the toms and bass drum. There is also a snare drum pitch bend control which can make the basic pitch of the drum bend up or down as it decays after being hit. By juggling these controls one can very easily get a good, solid snare drum sound which for me was the highlight of the whole kit. Lastly, we have a master volume control, and a red LED situated above each set of controls which lights up when the relevant pad is struck. I found the LEDs to be very handy in pointing out quickly which set of controls I was after.

The pads are pressure sensitive and it was easy to play with dynamics; the degree of sensitivity is pre-set but it was perfectly adequate for most situations. Like the Simmons kit, however, I did feel that the sensitivity was based upon a certain threshold value where you can get a response from varied stick pressure but you are totally stuck with the degree of spread. In any kit of this nature a sensitivity control is desirable but it should be accompanied by a Spread control whereby you can expand the breadth of that sensitivity, so that there is a marked difference between the volume you get when you manage to 'just' trigger the pad and the level you achieve when you really belt it - at present all you can do even on the far more expensive Simmons kit is just move the same degree of sensitivity up and down the scale of an attack threshold. Which is a big difference!

All of the controls were reasonably effective yet no real extremes could be achieved except when utilizing a lot of sustain. The versatility of the snare drum is not matched by the other drums, I think that most users of the Klone-Kit 2 would, if they compared their respective control settings, all find them to be pretty similar. To be fair, however, I must admit to being a trifle spoiled with regards to sound quality because I work mostly with the Simmons kit and with digitally sampled drum machines.

Bearing in mind the £499 retail price of the Klone Two the sounds are... fair. Not great, but certainly not terrible either. You can do a lot with EQ and effects providing, of course, that you have access to them. My main complaint is that the toms and bass drum are just too pure, too 'clean' sounding. I know it would (here we go again) add to the cost, but the ability to add a little white noise to each and every drum would boost its effectiveness tremendously. I also found that I couldn't tune the bass drum low enough in pitch even when the control was at the limit of its travel. That may be just personal taste, and I'm sure it'll be fine for most people, but it's something to keep in mind if you consider purchasing the kit.

Once everything was all set up I happily played away on the Klone Two for ages, as a deluxe practice kit which won't disturb anyone it's superb, albeit at a price. It is plainly head and shoulders above its predecessor. But here is the crunch - is the extra two hundred pounds you'll pay for the improvements value for money? I suppose the fact that I've made references between the Klone Kit 2 and the Simmons SDS 5 is flattery in itself, but you get what you pay for and the Klone 2 seems to fall into a rather uncomfortable niche somewhere between the two currently available extremes of a product range. And five hundred quid, even these days, is still nothing to sneeze at. You'll just have to try it and decide for yourself.

I have to commend Honky Tonk Music for 'putting their money where their mouth is' by developing this kit because, so far, they are certainly heading in the right direction. I understand they have many ideas concerning further development of the Klone Kit with flexible, modular systems enabling the player to extract more versatility from a Klone Kit personalised to his needs, so I can also congratulate them for full marks in the 'Attitude Dept.' Still, 'so far' is definitely the crux of the matter, and this is an area where these kits need to be taken much further.

Very few musical instruments or music related products are manufactured without close regard to the eventual retail price; the strange, convoluted formulae manufacturers arrive at after considering cost-per-unit, demand, profit & loss, growth potential, research & development, have no hypnotic interest for the musician who wants a better instrument to play. If you stop and think about it, the above factors are indeed all reasonable ones. What really mystifies me is why more advanced electronic drum kits and drum machines aren't already available.

So much progress has been achieved with keyboard orientated synthesizers in both quality AND cost. The initial horror of acoustic players has given way to curiosity at worst and full fledged support at best, and now it's obvious that the possibilities which electronics opens up for drums and percussion is spreading to more and more people every day. The demand is certainly there so why do manufacturers insist on taking such tentative steps all the time? Why not deliver really comprehensive drum kits and drum machines which give us full control over the sounds we want to make? Why not really Go For It!