There's been a great debate in the worship community for years about acoustic vs. electronic drums in worship. I won't lie, as a drummer, I've always been partial to acoustic kits (most drummer are, I've found), but as a worship leader and (especially!) as a sound tech, I can definitely see the benefits of electronic kits as well. This is a question we've dealt with at Centerpoint as of late, and I thought I'd share a little bit of our story and our results.
For the first 4 years of it's existence, Centerpoint was a portable church that met in an office building. Obviously, acoustic drums weren't really an option in there, so they bought an electronic kit (long before I came to the church). A Yamaha DTXpressII, I believe. Pretty decent for the time (almost 6 years ago), but nothing anybody would really consider to be an adequate replacement for a good acoustic kit, soundwise.
Fast forward to this past October. 5 years of constant set up and tear down (not to mention 250+ services!) have taken their toll on the old drum kit, and it's in pretty bad shape. We've moved into a new facility that seems as if it might be able to handle an acoustic kit (if we baffled it well). And, the piece de resistance: these guys started using our building on Sunday nights and offered us the use of their kit and baffling. Hard to turn down. Well... three months in we've realized something - you can muffle and baffle the kit all you want, but in our warehouse worship space, it just doesn't work. It's too loud. Putting my drummer hat (and even my worship leader hat) back on, that breaks my heart. The acoustic kit was a nice kick for our live energy on stage, and I like the sounds. Eventually, though, we all agree that it makes sense to go back to electronics. Except that we can't really go back to our old electronics... which brings me to today.
An hour and a half at Columbus Percussion and several rounds of playing on the various options currently available later, I and two of my drummers unanimously (and overwhelmingly) settled on the Yamaha DTXTREME IIIS, and I couldn't be happier. This kit really blew me away. It looks like this:
Simply put, this is the best experience I've ever had with an electronic kit. I went in thinking V-Drums and mesh heads, but they don't hold a candle to Yamaha's new stuff. Two things really made this kit stand out:
1.) The cymbal pads. Not only do they have some of the most realistic cymbal sounds I've heard, the cymbals themselves are great. The ride is a 3-trigger (edge, body, bell), and the ride and crash both choke very realistically. On top of that, this is hands down the best electronic hi-hat mechanism I've seen. Moves and feels more like the real thing than anything else out there.
2.) The drums are actually tunable. No more digging through menus to adjust sounds. If you want your snare to pop a little more, you turn a knob on the pad, and the drum tunes up. If you want a little more depth out of your floor tom, you can take it down the same way. This was the feature that put me over the top on this kit.
On top of that... the sounds are great. All of the essential Yamaha kits are there (The Birch Custom Absolute and Beech Custom Absolute impressed us the most). On top of that, we were able to buy a floor model that was used by a Yamaha rep for a clinic at the store and has some extra presets and songs loaded. Very cool.
This morning I knew that we needed a new electronic kit for Centerpoint. This afternoon I reluctantly went downtown to see what they had. Tonight, I'm extremely excited about what we came home with. So are my drummers, which is the most important thing! I can't wait to hear these rocking on Sunday!
