Mr. Graham Vaughan from St Ives Cambs | Purchase date: 18 January 2010 id: 1434

Absolutely brilliant service, very quick, and efficiant. the drum kit and accessories easy to assembly and would definately buy from here again.

Mr. Simon Campion from aberystwyth | Purchase date: 29 December 2009 id: 1727

I bought this alesis dm5 kit about 3 months ago. In the scheme of things the kit was incredibly cheap AND benefited from andertons addition of a bassdrum pedal, stick, stool and headphones included free! I wanted the kit principally to input drums with a bit more of a human feel into a computer based music production setup (via midi), but also to blast about on a bit. The kit was neatly packaged and the assembly of the frame was fairly straightforward. Everything clamps together well enough and, after plugging all of the pads into the module, I was away. As a beginner with the drums it's satisfying to get powerful sounds from the module straight off and tweaking the sounds and kits setups is achieved easily enough with aid of the decent dm5 manual. As you'd expect from alesis, the available sounds range from the sumblime to the pretty odd, with various clanks and pings triggerable if you like that sort of thing. There are though a fair sprinkling of realistic sounding snares, toms and cymbals to choose from too though, with big rock tones, studio room, country and jazz sets all in there. The midi out works well too and I can 'record' into my music production software via midi just fine. Moving on to the playability of the kit, big plus points for the bass drum pad which, with a bit of carpet under the kit, feels solid and stable. The pedal supplied (free remember) is sound too. The drum pads are 8inch with a rim holding a replaceable skin to the (?) foam pad beneath. These seem solid enough and do give something of the look and feel of hitting a drum, though the raised rim and small target means accuracy is key; it also means that it's difficult to get any shuffle effects from the snare, because there isn't the space to draw the stick back across the small surface area. The cymbal pads again are fine; with a bit of clouting they loosen a bit but there are nice big keys to retighten when necessary. The feature of the kit I'm least happy with though, is the hi hat pedal, which is a triple switched affair. The hat is either open (when your foot is completely off the pedal), closed, (when any pressure at all is applied) or there's a foot splash sound set, triggerable by tapping your foot on the pedal. The sounds are ok but the foot pedal doesn't allow any variability and there's just not much feel there in my opinion. Considering its price, this kit is pretty good really and is a great way of having fun and developing a bit of technique too. It's never going to be a substitute for an acoustic kit, but the volume can be turned down! Personally though I wonder whether I'd have been better waiting (ages) til I could afford something with a better, more feely hi hat.

Mr. Marc Pavey from Falmouth | Purchase date: 12 November 2009 id: 1026

I found the DM5 Pro Kit to be very easy to setup and found the module to be quite easy to get to grips with. The frame is sturdy, and has presented no problems to me so far, (and I have not always been gentle with it!) It took only a couple of days before I felt comfortable with the module. It is packed with a variety of sounds, and you can configure a set from the custom sounds or play straight off the bat with one of the well balanced presets. The kit itself has relatively realistic feeling heads. They are no substitute for real skins, but for that in an electronic kit you would be looking at several thousand pounds, so for the price they are excellent. Furthermore, they have a response accuracy I had never anticipated, and it can be adjusted to suit your play style. You can also adjust the decay, pitch and volume of each trigger. The dual-zone snare is a significant bonus, which I have had programmed as a ride bell, a snare rim, or a second crash. The ability to choose greatly expands the possibilities with this kit, and the module allows for 3 more trigger systems to be hooked up. The one grief I do have with this kit, is that the sound of the stick hitting the surfaces is quite loud, particularly on the dual-zone pad which when played aggressively makes a sound of wood hitting hard plastic. However, this is by no means a big problem, just something to bear in mind if you had planned to play them at night but didn't want to annoy the neighbours. They are still, of course, significantly quieter should you wish them to be, than their acoustic counterparts. I would recommend this kit over others in a similar bracket due to the possiblity of expansion that this particular kit allows. A friend of mine purchased the Traps E450 kit, and he experienced problems with double triggering, and found that the kit wasn't very resilient at all. Ultimately, my only grievance with the kit is one that is easily resolved. If you like playing your drums at some volume, your probably won't even notice. If you play your drums with headphones on, you probably won't notice. The value for money is incredible, and for those not wishing to spend £1000+, I believe this is the best choice.