Customer Reviews

Yamaha DD55C 7-Pad General MIDI Digital Drum System

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

 

 

I bought this item after testing it out for a few minutes at a local store, and found that it is much more versatiel that it may first appear. Pads are responsive, but not too responsive - sensitivity is adjustable. I recommend trying to find the kit with the drum stand included - it makes it very easy to have a setup at home.

Drum sounds are great, comparable to more MIDI modules that would otherwise come separately, or if you want to you could run the MIDI through the wavetable on the soundcard of your computer (or run virtual samplers or whatever off of it - everything comes across standard channel 10 (drum channel) but you can also program is for other channels or even separate pads by channel.

You may read complaints about the hat being hard to use... I found that if you hold the sticks properly this becomes less of an issue - the set is designed to trim back double-hits and so if you are sloppy, you will not get the clean hat sounds you are looking for - so yes, it works, clean up your playing! :)

The rubber pads also have a very similar feel to rubber practice pads used by teachers and students all over... so the feel of the drum hits is excellent. As I have gotten better and more confident I find I am able to bash away at the set and it's responsive nature is excellent.

However I have two recommendations -

1. Get headphones - you can practice anytime!
2. Get a carpet - this is an old trick to keep gear in place while you play, but it really works for this kit. The trigger pedals are plastic and light and so although they have rubber feet, they have the tendency to bounce if you are a good stomper! So you hear the trigger of your stomp but then the trigger when the pedal hits the floor! On hardwood floor this happens easily. So get yourself a small carpet or else attach some sort of plate to the bottom of the pedals so they won't slip...

Word has it this kit can use the fancier Yamaha pro kick and hat pedals also, so if you really want to get serious about it, well there you go.

I tried taking lessons on a conventional drum kit and found that it made too much noise and that I wouldn't practice because I hated having people hear how bad I was... This kit eliminates that problem, and you can focus more on the essentials of separating your limbs and on timing... It includes an onboard metronome also, and the black circle is a dialing control that can be used to select kits, sounds, songs, and metronome speed...

Alternative in pad mode, you just hit the pad you want to change and it cycles through the sounds and roll patterns until you find one you like. I find myself dialing back and forth playing around with different sounds.

Also, there are voices with multiple patch triggers based on velocity - meaning that one those voices, not only will the sound be louder as you hit harder, but the sound will changed from a more subdued snare sample to a rimshot or a louder snare sample as well as get louder.

Final rec, if the sounds themselves don't do it for you, I have found two things help expand the possibilities of this kit:

1. a POD or Roland Cube15 or another modeling amplifier - like having a drum mic mixer in your home...

2. an actual mixer... I suggest one of the home varieties - I personally run it through a Peavy RQ100 along with my stereo and play along - 30 hour jam sessions and you can play along great. My brother just bought the small Behringer home mixer and really likes it as well, although it is geared more towards being portable with the Peavey RQ100 has inputs that are computer friendly...

Well that's about it - it's a great starter kit for someone who has always wanted to try drums - that was me 2 months ago, and now I am actually doing it thanks to this machine.

This drum is the instrument of choice to begin in the professional percussion. If you are an appassionate of real drums, you will miss the feel of a traditional drum (the sound of the perimeter of the snare, the multiple variations in the sound of the ride cymbal, the subtleness of opening and closing the hi-hat -though this drum system is sensible enough to allow some basic opening/closing playing-). If you are not, you'll get high quality drum sounds (hard to distinguish from real ones), together with a nice atmosphere (due to the DSP effects that the DD55 includes).

Moreover, if you turn the hand-percussion mode on, you will enjoy some basic (yet high quality again) percussion instruments.

All the pads and the bass drum pedal provide fine sensitivity, so you will usually not need to strike them hard - simply give gentle touchs and enjoy

The MIDI implementation is also very good, so you can record your performances or use the DD55 as a external sound module.

In sum, it's probably the best choice in its price range.

No, It's not as good or as realistic as a real set and not as good a digital drum set as a Roland V Drum setup, but for what it is, it's excellent. As a beginning recreational drummer, this was a great buy since it allows me to get acquainted with playing without taking up tons of room, being loud to play and cumbersome to transport.

I wish such an instrument was available when I was in college in Minnesota when other band members and I had to help our drummer move his set and cymbals across campus to and from evening practice in the freezing Winter. Although this digital drum pad would never completely replicate a real set for practice / jam sessions, it would definitely get the job done by plugging into the sound system via a direct-input box. Also this DD-55 would have been much smaller and lighter to transport and we wouln't have wasted 20 minutes per practice for set up / take down time.

If you're interested in learning drums without buying a full-blown set that takes up lots of space, can't be played with headphones, requires additional sound insulation and costs more it would be a well-placed purchase. It would also be a good buy if you already have a set and want to practice at night and/or need to move your gear frequently to and from practice and jam sessions.

Now, if anyone from Yamaha Products is reading here are my recommendations for changes / enhancements in new models:
- It would be great to be able to store drum kits, songs and settings remotely via a USB device. DD-55 drum kits and settings are lost when the unit looses power.
- 7 levels of drum pad sensitivity are good, but 12 would be much, much better -- particularly for the cymbals.
- The DD-55 unit has one 1/4" stereo output. It would be great if the unit also had two mono 1/4" outputs and/or two RCA outputs.
- Two more small drum pads would be great.
- The built-in DD-55 speakers are very wimpy and can be dispensed with. The sounds come across much better through headphones or an Amplifier / PA setup.
- A more sturdy fiberglass casing would make the unit much more road-worthy.
- The size of the unit is a bit irregular and hard to fit in many gig bags. It would be great if soft-padded or hard-shell case bags are available.

Although these changes may add between $50 and $100 per unit, such enhancements would make the unit a more professional grade, easily transportable practice unit.

I bought this product looking for a good drum machine that I could use alongside my keyboard and in the software Reason 3 on my PC to input midi data for drums. This seemed perfect.

First impressions are very poor. The machine is toy-like, with only a 3-digit LED to communicate to the user making the interface awkward. There are a selection of built-in rhythms that suggest it is intended for absolute beginners rather than experienced musicians, and the overall feel of the product is cheap and nasty.

The drum pads are unresponsive. If you hit them, more often than not they do not sound. The touch sensitivity is laughable, with hard hits often sounding quiet and vice versa. The footpedals that come with it are pure Fisher-Price nonsense, unweighted and often unresponsive.

So much for the hardware. But the biggest crime is the selection of sounds: desperately unimaginitive percussion sounds are on board, with an almost depressingly poor selection. The snares all sound like a variation of one another (increased pitch for one, reverb for another, etc.) There are several sampled, but they all sound very similar. The same goes for the bass drums. Whilst there are electronic toms (though not in any of the preprogrammed kits), you have to hunt for them and there is no electronic snare/bass to accompany them for that 'electronic kit' feel. Even the tabla/congas are poorly represented.

In short, the sounds lack any of the imagination and subtlety one would expect of a dedicated drum machine. I would guess they have been taken off of one of Yamaha's less expensive portatone keyboards.

The MIDI implementation is truly pitiful, with no way of adjusting any of the MIDI settings as far as I can tell. It will not work properly with Reason 3, anyway.

You can tell I'm not enamoured with this product. I would advise anyone looking to buy this to try it out first if you can, as it left me with a bad taste in the mouth and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in saying that. I would have expected better from Yamaha, especially at the incredibly high price they are charging for what is essentially a kiddies toy.

this set is fantastic. the only down side is that you need like dj headphones to play in private. another fault is that the pads have a little sensor device so you have to hit the middle of the pad. Overall this is a great set for a starter or someone who just wants to travle and not bting a big acoustic.

I've had Yamaha for about a month and I have no complaints. I use it for recording drums into my songs on PC and the only limitation would be my drumming skills.

I actually started playing drums about 7 years ago and this was one of the first kits I had. I used this for 1-2 years before I could afford an acoustic kit so had plenty of time to become accustomed to it. It was great to plug into the PA system or with some headphones for a more private and controlled sound. It is fully customizable; each pad can be altered to produce any built-in sound. If more on the conservative side, there are various kits that are already set up to blend together.

For a beginner or someone with a low budget, this is perfect. Even now it's enjoyable to sit down at home, slip on the headphones and jam away, all the while in the middle of the den yet disturbing not a soul.

I had the first one while I lived abroad and was too bulky to transport stateside again. You could say though it was so great I bought it twice!

This is a great little system, especially for the price. My one complaint, as a lefty, is that NONE of the preconfigured kits are left-handed. That means the only one I can use is the custom one. Bummer, but still fun. Also, note that it doesn't come with a power cord (strange).

Im all for getting a budget item to decide if you want to invest more in a better version. The only problem with this approch is when the budget version is so poor that it is actually useless. If judged solely by the quality of this device, the entier field of drumming is craptastic and uesless. The fact is, the two foot "pedals" are crappy buttons that fail to trigger most of the time and do nothing to simulate the feeling of a real drum pedal. Also, the pads often dobule trigger on a single hard hit, and randomly fail to trigger when you hit two pads at the same time.

Junk. pass.

This was a gift to my husband and I can honestly say he loves it. The company was great doing business with, would use them again.