Customer Reviews

Roland HD-1 V-Drums Lite Electronic Drums

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This kit is near-to-perfect for someone who finds their acoustic kit has become too loud, too big, too difficult to transport, and too time-consuming to set up.

If you are looking for something that is small with a small footprint that is light, portable, and that sounds good, this kit will fill the bill. I haven't been able to put the sticks down (geeze, now I know why I got away from playing for 15 years - it's as additive as crack cocaine).

The other reviews voice criticism and they are justified, depending on what you are looking for. Unlike the higher-end kits, you cannot select individual drums. The drums for any of the pre-programed ten kits, and the volume of those individual drums are "global," meaning you can turn the whole kit up or down, but not adjust the tune or volume of one drum vs. another.

The voices are sampled and really sound incredible, but if I could "have it my way," I would have the snare be a bit more sensitive (you can set the sensitivity, but again, it's "global" for all the drums in the kit), and would make the snare and cymbal louder in relation to the toms and kick.

The peddle system is ingenious, and works well. It took a little while to find a the sweet spot to allow me to do "Banham doubles," and it still is not as easy to do as it is with a true peddle, but it's close.

The other thing that I have seen on the more expensive kits that the HD1 does not have is the ability to be able to choke out cymbals with your hand.

If these thing are important to you, you might want to look at a more expensive kit. But those kits are bigger, heavier, and more time-consuming to set up. If the reason you wanted is primarily for portability (the greatest kit in the world that you won't take to friends' house to jam with will do you no good, right?) - or what this thing is, for how tiny it is, and for what it weighs (32 lbs), you can't beat it with a stick - well, actually you can, and I have been, a lot.

More information: Kit 1 has a nice acoustic sound, like a kit in an intimate setting. Kit 1A is a "jazz kit," the snare sound of which I like the best. The crash is a bit more splashy, and the ride sounds like it has rivets. The hat is really crisp and clean. The second tom becomes a cross-stick on a rim. Kit 2 sounds just like drums in a big empty hall. Kit 2A sounds the same as 2, but the hat peddle becomes a second kick (open hat) and the second tom become a cowbell. Kit 3 is a snare, crash, ride, hat, and three "island drums." Kit 3A is a snare, crash, ride, hat, and three percussion instruments of some kind or another. Forget about Kits 4 & 5 and their Alternates, unless you like Devo and dance music from the 80s.

I've had my HD-1 for 48 hours, and I've probably spent 8 to 10 hours playing them. First the good: I'm short on space and the HD-1 is very compact. You can get some decent sounds out of the snare drum. Rim shots are easy and sound OK. The bad: Very limited adjustment options for drum heads and cymbals. You can't do much to change the angles or tilt, and for me not being able to tilt the snare drum is a big annoyance. The tom-tom heads are not tunable and although they sound decent enough there's no life in the heads. The cymbals have near zero volume. You can't adjust the volume separately, it's a global volume setting. There are ten different kits. A couple of them are just goofy and I'll never use them. Of the others, there are some snare sounds I like, and some tom sounds I like, but they're not in the same kit, and you can't change the makeup of the kits. The control panel is mounted right in front, so if you're trying to drum while wearing headphones, guess where the wire is? Yep, it's going to get tangled in your drumsticks. I'm going to have to rig an extension somehow. Basically, this is a decent practice pad set.

I really wanted a 100% mesh head Roland v drum kit, but $3000.00 was out of my price range for what I do. I use Kit sounds 1 and 2 only. They are great through head phones, and my project studio monitors. I get a jazz set, and a rock set. My old acoustic drums only had one jazz set sound, lol. The midi out is great for triggering my VSTI drum sounds for my software sequencer (Acid Pro). I am an old Drum Corps drummer. I have played with jazz fusion combo's and hard core troops. I had truly lost the love for playing drums (burnt out), until I decided to dump the acoustic drums, and get this quality Roland HD-1 V drum lite. They take up very little room, and won't piss off the Neighbors. The rack is solid, but does tend to shake a bit because of the attached pedals. I switched to 7A sticks for this kit, because the mesh head snare is very sensitive, and the cymbal triggers respond best in my opinion to a smaller stick.
Would I use this kit for a Gig? Probably not because of the 1/8" stereo mini plugs, but I have no problem using this as a practice set, or in the project studio. Great product for the price in my opinion, it is so nice to enjoy drumming again.

Overall it's a great practice kit, but the lack of config settings both in hardware as in the sound (software) is a real pain.
For instance, the cymbals, and especially the ride, is very low in volume. You can only change the overall volume, and overall pad sensitivity, not specific pad volume or sensitivity.
Unlike another poster posted, the kits can not be set to a different sensitivity, only overall sensitivity, which can be a real pain when switching between drums, you'll need a couple of seconds to change the sensitivity.

The bass kick on the first drumset is very loud, yet the variation of the first kit, the bass kick is very soft.
The bass kick of the second drumset (Rock; not the double bass pedal set) has a bug in it too. The bass kick changes notes (as if another kick is used) when kicking very soft.

The toms and snare aren't very adjustable mechanical wise.
The snare you can set it closer or further away from you (about 1 inch), up or down (a good 4 inch). That's about it.
The toms you can tilt a few degrees, move them about 1 to 2 inches more to the center or outward of the set. The arms you can fully open in a 90 degrees angle (the drums fit nicely in a room corner (facing the corner), or close them to a 0 degree angle for transport, or anything between to bring the toms closer to the player.

I'm a tall guy (6'2"), and for me the kick and hihat foot pedals where tilted waaaay to much backwards!
Playing it in this position is painful! My foot bends only this much backwards, as much as the pedal would be when it's half pressed in.
For this I had to adjust my seat and the drums,
first I had to set my drum seat to the lowest position, a good ft and a half from the floor, and tilt the drumset forward (adjust the feet under the pedals to highest tilt).
It is the only way to be able to use the kick pedals in a normal way!
The con is that the toms and cymbals will move further away from you, and nothing you can do to make them come closer (except for closing the arms a bit).
Because of that flaw, together with the simplicity of the kit, and the budget price, this kit is a good set for teenagers, and those just starting out, not sure if they will want to continue drums in a few months or not.

It is also a nice practice kit!

Kudo's for Roland for making the toms very realistic feeling! The toms don't bounce as well as the snare, neither as the Yamaha toms; which makes for a more realistic feel!
The cymbals easily could have supported choke, a feat that would not have costed too much to implement!

The connector of the set is compatible with the TD 4 kits, in other words, you could connect a TD4 module to the plug, however, it would not fit the stand, as they don't have the same mechanical brackets to hold the brains.

The drums sound nice with the Roland speaker PM01, but connecting studio monitors to it, the sound is not so great sounding (too much lowend).

The snare is very sensitive, the toms and especially cymbals are less sensitive.
The MIDI output has less sensitivity.When playing together with Superior Drummer (or EzDrummer) you can notice the unit has greater dynamics than over midi (where the kit is limited to the 128 volume steps).

The midi latency is very low. Running on a Core2Duo 1,6Ghz, the latency is lower than 9ms. (in other words, only audible when hearing both signals simultaneously; and playing via software does not give a noticeable delay).

Something not much reviewed is the tempo,
The tempo switch goes from 40 to 220 BPM. Setting the tempo switch to the middle (12 o clock) has a rythm of about 130BPM.

The headphones volume is quite loud at max, about twice as loud as normal phones equipment, and 4x-10x louder than line equipment.
You need to set the master volume a tad above 12 o clock to have a normal line volume to feed monitors or other professional equipment.

Overall I can say I'm quite content of the kit, however, I would not advise this kit to anyone who is (or will be) playing in a band, but get a similar priced Alesis set, or get a TD4!

This set is also not meant to be demounted and mounted many times. Best thing you can do is just fold the arms (where the toms and cymbals are mounted on), and transport it like that on the back seat of a car.
The screws seem like they would wear out faster, as well as the plastic components seem to be good enough for (de)mounting the kit a good 50 times before something breaks.

I just have set it up in the corner of my room, and keep it there.

I owned a yamaha dtxpress 3 before this and i will never go back, this is the best thing you can get for portability and if you need something quiet. I will choose my acoustic kit any day but this has been great for my needs. It has 10 kits but at least 4 are very useable.

The main con is the pedals feel like a rock band kit. But I posted a review on you tube with a tutorial on how to make the pedals better. hope it helps.

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I really like how small this drum set is, you can fold the arms in and fit it into a small car which is awesome. I keep it in my dorm room for practicing. The snare drum on this is really nice- good response and velocity. The same goes for the toms. However, I am NOT impressed by the cymbals and the foot pedals. The cymbals trigger very poorly and are too quiet, so that will be very annoying unless you can edit them using a midi connection to a DAW. The foot pedals are THE WORST!!! My Rock Band drums had a better bass drum pedal than these did and that's saying something because it sucks. They're both unsensitive at best and totally unresponsive at worst. The bass drum pedal broke about a year after I bought the HD-1. The kits that come with the drum set are GARBAGE. They're fun to mess around with but not quality at all.

Pros:

-Very compact
-Nice snare and toms
-Good for practicing

Cons:

-Expensive
-Terrible cymbals
-Cheap pedals

I LOVE this drums. I bought them for my husband so I didn't have to put up with all the noice. Setting it up was a breeze!! My hubby had it up and running in less than an hour. I't comes with everything you need to set it up, even a screw driver! He is ecstatic with the sound quality. I really recommend it!!

Love the kit. Was very easy to assemble. All the heads have great touch sensitivity and work great. The cymbals are great also. High hat is a bit quite in closed compared to the the others and with a monitor set low to medium the tap on the rubber is louder than the cymbal simulation - Oh well minor inconvenience for me. In that I am a beginning drummer and wanted something to learn on an not disrupt the rest of the house - this set with its headphone feature is great. The feature drum set options are a bit limited but nevertheless very functional. The metronome is essential and works great. The other feature I especially like is the line in mp3 jack. Great for playing along and adjusting volumes so your sequenced volumetrically between mp3 and kit. Set seems very durable also. Great purchase. no buyer remorse what so ever!!

How was I to know that this could be so much fun and at my age too?! It was relatively easy to plug up considering I'm writing the idiot's guide to all this new electronic stuff but then I tested it out and WOW! THESE DRUMS ARE FUN!!! I'm thinking that nobody is going to hear from me for a very long time.

The HD-1 is a nice kit for the money, but understand the difference between this and the next steps up the TD-4K2 or the TD-4KX2. The mesh heads are really nice in that they are sensitive and you can get a real feel for the drum. The triggers are just that - triggers. They "trigger" the A or B sound from the module, and they really don't have much touch to them. Also, the head does not let you change the volume for any of the pieces, and I find the hi-hat - in most of the (10) sets - to be too low.

I play for fun, and play most every day I walk past the kit. It fits nicely in my small studio, and if / when I have to play with my friends it will suffice. You can't beat the price though.