ION Drum Rocker Premium Drum Set Plus Pro Upgrade Review

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(More customer reviews)drums are my life i was playing win i was 12 years old and now i'm 19 years old and i have not stop playing???????????

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Product Description:
This is the ION Drum Rocker Premium Drum Set with all the components needed to turn it into a REAL Electronic Drum Kit. This kit includes four drum pads, two cymbal pads, pedal, game controller, drum rack, all necessary cables, and a pair of drum sticks PLUS a hi-hat pad w/cymbal arm, real kick pedal, kick drum pad, and the Roadie Rock Box Digital Drum Module.

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Xbox 360 Rock Band Stage Kit Review

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(More customer reviews)I just picked this up after several weeks of considering it to be a very expensive novelty...$100 for an audio-sensing light show and fog machine?Heck...you can pick up a ton of stuff at a local Spencer's Gifts for that price, so why bother with this?It was only when I read that the kit actually SYNCS with the music in Rock Band 2 that I took a closer look.

This kit does NOT use cheap audio sensors to work, e.g. the lights aren't dependent on the beat to function like some cheap novelty light from Spencer's.Instead, each song in Rock Band 1/2 has a specific light show that has been specifically programmed to match, and the kit automatically senses and responds to the songs you've selected.The synchronization is UNCANNY.The strobe fires in JUST the right parts, and is used very sparingly so as not to diminish the effect.The timing of the fogger kicking on is also quite good.For example, it will automatically turn on a few seconds before a killer guitar solo so that you have a great cloud around you when it begins...NICE.

Pros:
1.Now that I have played RB with this kit, playing without it is NOT the same.I'm spoiled with this kit...it makes fake-rocking-out SO much more fun.The fun factor of Rock Band, which is great to begin with, goes right over the top with this kit.
2.Setup is fast and easy.Simply plug the LED unit into the fogger, then plug the fogger into the wall and power up the heating element.It takes perhaps 30 seconds or so to reach operating temperature.Plug the kit into one of the USB ports on the Xbox, and power it on.The unit will do the rest.
3.The fog that came with the unit seemed to dissipate pretty quickly, and was essentially odorless, however I have cathedral ceilings where the unit is used, so a smaller room would likely be much more concentrated in terms of the density of the fog.After about 45 minutes of playing, the entire lower level of my house had a nice haze, but it was completely dissipated after about 15 minutes or so.
4.Durability seems pretty good on the fogger.It seems to be solidly built and resembles the nicer foggers you see for sale around Halloween.
5.As stated above, integration with the game is EXCELLENT.Lots of different patterns with the LED kit, and once you've got some decent fog in the room, the lights really add an interesting dynamic to the game, almost resembling lasers when the lens is set to maximum focus.

Cons:
1.The container of fog solution that comes with the kit is perhaps a half-liter, and does not last long at all.I spent the entire bottle in under an hour, and some songs definitely use more fog than others.I'd recommend buying additional water-based fog solution (I have been unable to locate any official RB fluid locally) ASAP...you will go through the starter bottle very quickly.I ran out and now need to go to Guitar Center or a local party store to buy more.
2.The red and yellow LEDs in the unit are pretty underpowered, though the blue and green are quite bright.It would have been nicer had the red/yellow LEDs been brighter, but they still work quite well in a darkened room.(note - any significant ambient light in the room will heavily diminish the effect, so play in the dark!)
3.The fog machine is a bit noisy when it is firing, but that's nothing that turning up the volume won't fix.:-)
4.The cable that connects the fogger to the LED unit is ridiculously short, perhaps 3-4' max.This forces you to put the units rather close together...not a bad thing, but it limits some flexibility unless you get a longer cable.

Overall, this unit is a great addition to Rock Band 2 if you can afford the price.Were it not for the syncing of the music to the kit, I'd say it was overpriced, but now that I have the kit, I don't regret the purchase at all, and my kids absolutely LOVE it.

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Product Description:
Transform your jam session into a full-on rock show with smoke and light effects. Light and smoke automatically synchronize with music from the game. Synchronized light & smoke effect show for your Xbox 360. The kit includes: Fogger with built in strobe light, led array and a small bottle of liquid fog solution. Compatible with Rock Band and Rock Band 2 (Game Sold Separately).

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Guitar Hero World Tour Replacement Cymbal Wire Cable Left and Right Review

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(More customer reviews)Our cymbal cable was accidentally broken when a guest accidentally turned the cymbal too far and the cord ripped.We called the manufacturer and they were extremely UN-helful.They said there was nothing they could do to fix the cymbal and told us we'd have to buy a whole new drum set!Seriously, whoever we spoke to either didn't know what they were talking about, or was just trying to make another sale.

We looked on Amazon and found the replacement cable within a couple minutes.It arrived very quickly and was a snap to install!It works perfectly and solved our problem for a fraction of the price a whole new drum set would have cost us!I highly recommend this if you've run into the same problem as we did.

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Product Description:
Replace your destroyed cymbal cable with the original part! This is for BOTH left and right cymbal cables. They are plug and play, no soldering or cutting required.These cables will work for Guitar Hero World Tour drum set in all platforms (Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360)

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Ion Drum Rocker Premium Drum Set Review

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(More customer reviews)For the serious Rock Band drummer, these drums bridge the gap between the video-game plastic drums and a real electronic kit.Each 4 pads and two cymbals (a third can be added, sold separately) can be adjusted, tilted, moved, and spread apart to feel more like playing a real drum kit.

PROS:
-Spot-on accurate with no missed notes or any kind of crosstalk between the parts
-velocity sensitive in Rock Band 2
-wide range of positioning of all main parts
-good build quality and solid for $300 e-drums (except *)
-assembly was quite easy, albeit intimidating and lengthy with the numerous parts (between hour and 90 minutes)

CONS:
-HATE the *kick pedal... noisy and cheap feeling.
-velocity doesn't have much dynamic range between light tap and hard bang -- minor point
-somewhat noisy, especially the high hat yellow cymbal
-customization/positioning can lead to confusion and frustration

On that last point:there's a reason the stock Rock Band drums are positioned the way they are... the 4 pads close together makes it easy to play the game, especially for non-drummers.This kit allows moving all the parts around, which is nice for creating the feeling of playing a real drum set -- but once back in the game, it becomes harder to play.Plus, adding cymbals makes additional (albeit optional) targets that take getting used to, so there some "swing and a miss" to overcome.Having a closed high hat cymbal "yellow" to the left of the snare pad "red" is cool to play crossed arms, but during the game yellow is always to the RIGHT of red.Also, the reach to hit "open high hat" on the blue tom is far from yellow cymbal, and it doesn't feel quite right.

There is a learning curve to get used to, and it takes a couple hours of playing and adjusting to get everything just right.Once all the parts were where I wanted and I replaced that awful kick pedal (a high-hat controller on other kits!...minus 1 star) with a Pearl "Omega Pedal" (mini to 1/4" jack needed), this kit becomes INSANELY FUN in Rock Band 2!!!!

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Product Description:
The wait is over for the next generation of musical gaming equipment. Whether you are an aspiring amateur, or a practicing professional, Ion's award-winning Drum Rocker Premium Drum Set for Xbox 360 lets Rockband players finally jam out with ease, letting your inner rockstar come out screaming.


The Ion Drum Rocker Premium Drum set can be customized to fit your drumming style. View larger.

Professional-grade design allows you to unleash your inner rockstar. View larger. The Ion Drum Rocker Premium Drum Set Features:

Completely customized set-up.
Ultra-quiet velocity-sensitive drum pads.
Sturdy, all-metal kick drum pedal.
Professional design from Alesis, one of the largest electronic drum manufacturers in the world.

Game Critics Awards Winner
Rockband, which took the gaming world by storm in late 2007, was followed by the highly-anticipated sequel, Rockband 2 that was released in September of 2008. With Rockband 2 came Ion's Drum Rocker Set, which quickly took the Game Critics Awards top spot in 2008's Best Peripheral/Hardware category.
Professional-Grade Aluminum Rack and Pads
While other drum controllers force you to use their configuration with a pre-molded, plastic array, the Drum Rocker's professional-grade aluminum rack lets you position your snare, tom and cymbal pads the way you want. Not only can you play your hi-hat with a right-hand crossover by placing your cymbals anywhere around your kit, but by mounting your pads to the drum rack with the included metal L-arm and clamp system, you can tilt, swivel, raise and lower the cymbals to whatever position you want.
Drum Rocker's velocity-sensitive drum pads feature an ultra-quiet playing surface and a more natural and consistent stick rebound than your average pad. The pad housing is made of a hi-impact plastic, which means that no matter how much you punish them night after night, they will always be ready for more.
The Drum Rocker's all-metal kick drum pedal is also designed to take abuse. It offers the perfect amount of tension to replicate the feeling of a real drum pedal. And keeping in line with its set-up flexibility, the kick drum pedal comes with Velcro and retractable spikes, allowing you to place it in the most comfortable position.
Go Beyond Gaming into Real Music
Built by the engineers at Alesis, one of the largest manufacturers of professional electronic drums in the world, the Drum Rocker Premium Drum Set delivers the most realistic drumming experience available to a gamer.
But when you're ready to move from playing the game to playing in a real life, you can swap the game controller module with one of the professional drum brains made by Alesis, such as their DM5 drum module, or any other drum brain that accepts a quarter-inch output. (Drum modules are sold separately.) And with the option of purchasing a third cymbal, you can round out your kit and move beyond gaming and onto the stage.
The Drum Rocker Premium Drum Set is compatible with both Rockband and Rockband 2 for the Xbox 360.



The Drum Rocker comes with cymbals, kick pedal, and drum pads.
View cymbal, kick pedal, and drum pad.
What's in the Box:
Aluminum drum rack, 4 drum pads, 2 cymbals, drum pedal, all mounting hardware and connecting cords, and 2 drumsticks.

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Rock Band 2 Standalone Drums Review

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(More customer reviews)This review will be mostly a comparison with the rock band 1 set, so I'll assume most people reading this are familiar with the game and/or the RB1 set. I'll also mention briefly the cymbal expansion and how it differs from the original play style. To start off, though, I'll list some of the features of this new set.

+Wireless
+Sound dampening pads
+Velocity sensitive (the harder you hit, the louder the sound)
+Metal-reinforced pedal
+Cymbal expansion portsThe set out of the box is just as simple as the first one to set up, and even if you have not put one together before, it is fairly self-explanatory. Square peg goes in the square hole, as it were. It took me about 5 minutes to socket the pieces and get it to the appropriate height I wanted. My overall impressions of the set are that although it is made with more plastic than aluminum this time around, the frame itself seems sturdier, with less wobble because the base and sides are a bit wider. Three AA batteries are needed, so you might want to invest in some rechargable batteries if you plan on playing quite a bit.

When playing, I can hear quite a difference from the original pads, and the sound dampening is indeed doing its job. However, it doesn't soften the sound *as much* as the silencer pads that are sold separately, so if you ended up buying those prior to this set, you may want to hang on to them. In fact, because I don't have a surround sound system on my TV, I found it hard to hear the different noises coming from the velocity sensitive pads unless I turned the TV up uncomfortably loud. In other words, the pads are softer, but still have some clacking going on that may interfere with some people's playing.

Visually, I can see a difference coming from the velocity sensitive equipment, and it gives you an on-screen cue on the lights at the bottom to tell you if what you just did was a soft or hard hit (there isn't anything in-between soft and hard) The velocity sensitive angle strikes me as a nice addition to the franchise, but it's purely for show.

The pedal, meanwhile, is holding up like a champ. I've never been one to slam down on it very much, but the metal plate will give me some added comfort while I play. On the other hand, it is only a plate covering the (still plastic) pedal, and not a replacement for the hinge at the bottom of the pedal, which is where most people have a problem. Expert level players or people who tend to bang on the pedal might still consider a replacement kit to make sure nothing happens to theirs.

Lastly, I bought the 2 pack of cymbals to plug in the expansion ports, and although I won't review them here, I will talk about how they make the game different. The striking part of the cymbals are rubber, so in theory they shouldn't make much noise, but in practice, they are as loud if not louder than the sound dampening pads. Anyone with thin walls or parents they don't want to wake up should be aware that this might still be a problem.

In-game, I've found myself avoiding the cymbals to start off with, because of the added difficulty of switching from pad to cymbal, but also because there is no in-game indicator of which one to use. I suppose I should have known this going in, but I supposed that there would be a way to switch the note charts somehow in the game so that it knew whether the player was using a standard kit or one with cymbals, and changed the notes accordingly. As it is, I'm certainly no drum expert, so knowing instinctively when I should be using what (pad or cymbal) is somewhat of an exercise in frustration, and makes me think that I'm really just picking up bad drumming habits that I'll later have to break. What it comes down to is that if you know a song by heart, or play live drums, this won't be a problem. For everyone else, hoping that this would be something of a drum trainer, the cymbals come off as a tacked-on experience. (Yes, I realize the irony of saying an expansion is tacked-on, but still)

They work as intended, but not without the players knowledge of how to use them. Not even the in-game drum trainer will be much help here because there is still no visual indicator of which object to hit.

As a whole, the set is a spot-on practical improvement. They located problem areas and seem to have improved on them so that the consumer wouldn't have to. But for many of the spots where they tried to take things a bit further (cymbals, velocity sensitive), the experience feels extraneous. The average user can be content with their Rock Band 1 drum kit, given that it is still in playing condition. With 20/20 hindsight, $90 seems like a steep price to pay for the relatively small advancements that this kit allows you to do.

The bottom line: This kit is good, but I would say it's better for people who have not already bought a rock band drum kit, and want one that will last.

Edited 3/18/09: After a few months of play, I thought I would note a couple of other flaws that came up. First of all, the clasps used for the height rods are too loose on my kit, so when I raised the kit and clamped them down, they would come loose while I played, making the whole thing crash down to floor level in the middle of a song. Not good. I had to solve this by switching out the base of my RB1 kit for the RB2 one, but be aware that this can be a problem, and you may have to RMA yours if you pick one up. Secondly, the pedal, as expected, has begun to crack at the hinge, so in all honesty, it's still a question of "when" and not "if" the pedal will break, even on this second generation set. Unfortunately, it looks like the real bottom line is that customers have gotten the shaft as far as Rock Band is concerned. These issues combined with the price knock my review down to 3/5 stars.

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Product Description:
Add a new dimension to your rock experience with the all new wireless Rock Band 2 Drum Set.

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Xbox 360 Rock Band Portable Drum Kit Review

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(More customer reviews)I got this drum because it's cheap and I thought maybe at least something about it would be fun to mess around with. I have an ion, but my pedal is too loud and I also wanted to get something I could take with me on the go to a friends' house. Well this thing worked as well as the other reviewers have said. The pedal in this kit is better and makes less impact noise than any pedal on the market, and if you can stick the pads down in one place, they seem to work perfectly as well. The only downside is that you pretty much have to use this with the included sticks, because the pads are too hard. The sticks in the box are rubber to compensate. Using wooden sticks on these is too loud to stand.

Another added perk of this kit is that the controller can be plugged in standalone and used like an NES controller for arcade games, as long as the games don't use the shoulder buttons. Also, people who are interested in modding projects can use the little controller part as the "brain" for a custom drum kit. People have used this to turn their nice electronic kits into RB kits!

Let me reiterate again that the pedal on this is better than the stock ion pedal in terms of noise and equal in function. Get a 1/4" to 1/8" converter and use it with your ion.

In every way, this product is worth your money if you're looking for any of the above features.

ADDITION: I am adding this to the review as a caution: the sticks that this comes with seem to be susceptible to breaking at the middle where they screw together. Now, I know that all drum sticks break eventually, but just be prepared to try to locate some rubber-head sticks as backups because you really can't play this too well with a wooden head.

UPDATE 6/29/09: The pedal for this is still working great, and I still use it with my expensive Ion drum kit. I play on expert now better than ever, and this pedal is very accurate and much easier to double tap to get those super-rapid beats. The official pedal I bought recently doesn't respond well at all to quick rapid pushes like this does. I even got a second portable kit just so I could have a spare, and the second one works just as well.

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Product Description:
Mad Catz- full-featured Portable Drum Kit for Rock Band is playable on virtually any solid surface. Designed to withstand over 1 million strikes, the durable rubber construction ensures the drumheads will outlast your frenetic drumming. Featuring an ultra-thin navigation panel for easy in-game setup, a pair of soft-tip two-piece replacement drumsticks and a remote kick drum pedal, everything you need to play drums is included. Easy to assemble and play and even easier to fold away for quick storage, when you don-t have ample room to rock with the full-sized drum kit, reach for these tabletop drums and rock like there is no tomorrow.

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