Old Roland TD-20 vs. New TD-25KV
 

I'm a songwriter/guitarist who is tired of pre recorded drum beats and want to buy an electronic kit. I also have a large selection of Superior Drums and want to use them triggered by the drum kit.

I have very little knowledge of electronic drums, so I'm asking opinions on these 2 options:

Used Roland TD-20 with full kit and includes all hardware, high hat stand, drum pedal (DW9000)and throne, etc: $1,000

or New TD 25KV for $3,000 total when adding the stand, drum pedal and throne.

My concern is that the TD20 is old technology? Only Midi and no USB? Can I access Superior Drummer sounds with the midi technology? The TD20 is almost 10 years old. If it dies, can I use a TD11 brain with the old drums pads?

The TD-20 at $1,000 sounds like a great deal, but I want to make sure it will do the job.

Thank you for any suggestions!

GK

Re: Old Roland TD-20 vs. New TD-25KV
 

Save your money would be my suggestion. I used an older TD-10 kit with SD2, EZdrummer and Addictive drums and it worked absolutely great. In fact, the old hat trigger worked the hat in the plugins a bit better than the hat in the Roland brain. Addictive Drums has a template for Roland kits, but the Toontrack products were already mapped almost perfectly. I just needed to change the midi-note assign on an AUX trigger pad to get things like sidestick or cowbell.

BTW, if you use a real hi-hat and one mic, things sound a notch better. Add a real ride cymbal and mic, another notch better. And my favorite setup was real cymbals all around, 3-4 mics and triggered kick/snare/toms. Having those live mics really adds some "air" to your final product(and if a "real" drummer sits in, let them bring a real snare drum too).

Re: Old Roland TD-20 vs. New TD-25KV
 

Thanks Dave! That's all I needed to hear!

Re: Old Roland TD-20 vs. New TD-25KV
 

My favorite hybrid that I've heard is the Roland TD20 with Zildjian Gen16 cymbals. It means two electronic boxes though. Another option that I've not tried would be the new Zildjian reduced volume cymbals with a TD20 kit.

Re: Old Roland TD-20 vs. New TD-25KV
 

Just tried those new cymbals yesterday. I don't care how cheap they are, they will never come home with me:rolleyes: I was much happier with a set of Alesis Surge cymbal triggers:o

Re: Old Roland TD-20 vs. New TD-25KV
 

Thanks for the quickie review; no shop around here has them so I don't have a chance to try them out.

Re: Old Roland TD-20 vs. New TD-25KV
 

Yeah, was wandering thru the drum room at GC over the weekend and they had them on display. I grabbed a stick and had a listen and was not impressed at all, other than they are "low" volume for practice:o