• I'm in love

  
  As reviewed by Aaron Stevens on 1/27/2012

  I also did a ton of research between Roland and Yamaha drums before choosing the yamaha520K electronic drum set. I have had it about 3 weeks now and have to say I am very pleased. The reason I chose the Yamaha set over the Roland was they both sell kits at round a grand that I was looking at.The Yamaha has three zone symbols while the Roland at the same price has only 2 zone symbols.This was important do to the fact that I wanted at least 2 crashes and a ride.With my ride symbol I have the ride sound in the middle,the ride bell sound at the cup but was able to add a crash to the edge.With my other symbol I have a crash on the end but added a splash at the cup of the symbol,so really I have 2 crash,1 splash and a ride on just 2 pads.Sure I could have added 3 different symbols to one pad on the Roland but that's just to much crashes on one pad.I also love this kit because of how you can adjust everything.I play with the Hi-Hat very close to the snare,The yamaha500 does not allow the Hi-Hat to be adjusted up or down unless you mess with the whole bar it's set on,It's pretty much stuck in the same place and seems to be to high for me to be comfortable.Also the snare bracket allows you to turn the snare any which way not just up and down..Really cool feature.It's also a three toned snare which is nice cause I don't have to stop mid song and mess with the module to get the click sound.The rim shot sounds really good to.The Hi-Hat is also three zoned.The toms are only one zone but that does not bother me at all.Even playing on a acoustic set for years I didn't do rime shots on the toms so no big deal.If your looking for an awesome electric kit under a grand the Yamaha520K is the best one in my opinion.I love it!!..Guitar Center did a great job in helping me with this set.Great service!!Thanks guys for helping me to continue my dream!!

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• DTX520-Excellent Drums

  
  As reviewed by James Jenkins on 9/14/2011

  I purchased the DTX520 drums after doing quite a bit of internet research and some in-store playing...primarily comparing these and Rolands. The DTX520 is a higher quality set at 500-600 dollars less than a Roland set. Also to me the Yamaha drums just sounded better, with a more realistic overall sound. The electronics are very good, with many drum kits and preset songs for practice. The overall quality of construction is also very good. Highly recommended--was surprised these were not advertised more by retailers.

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• Good for the price, but not perfect

  
  As reviewed by DAVID TRAMMELL on 2/7/2013

  This was my first electronic kit. I picked this up and played on it for 3 weeks. I got it so I could practice and record (MIDI) in my apartment and it worked fine for that. I recorded MIDI for a difficult 6 minute song (requiring several hours of takes) and I also practiced a 30 minute set worth of Iron Maiden songs with the intention of playing them live a couple weeks later. The kit did it's job and if it was the best kit on the market, I could have lived with it and would get plenty of use out of it. But I couldn't help but think of what could be better and I ultimately returned it for a Roland TD-15K-S (which costs twice as much). I think this is good for the price, but I have not tried other kits in this price range. I can say that it is well worth considering the upgrade to the Roland (or maybe a better Yamaha, though the upgrade to this replacing the tom pads with the white snare pads is probably not worth the cost). I mainly swapped it out because I wanted more realistic dynamics, but another factor was that the wires wouldn't stay securely in the drums. Every 30 minutes it seemed like I had to resecure the wire in the snare or kick drum (in particular) to keep it from cutting in and out or triggering unexpectedly. I had some concerns about reliability because of this. Out of the box, the set takes some getting used to. It doesn't respond like a real set at all. The white snare pad allows for the most dynamic playing, but it still had a significantly different response than an actual drum. In short, it's not as bouncy which can limit your top speed and change your dynamics. The black tom pads on the other hand are about as bad as you'd expect. Nuanced playing is pretty much out of the question on the toms. They are extremely stiff and produce a short difficult to control bounce which leads to double triggering of notes when you try to play fast rolls. Your mileage may vary depending on your playing style. The hi-hat is a weak spot as well, but that goes for any electronic kit below the 3 grand mark. The cymbals work alright with some adjustments. The kick drum pad works but can be a little weird. I don't need dynamics for my kick, but I do need accurate double bass triggering. After adjustments, I had it working relatively well, except if I left the kick pedal swinging (say moving from the left kick to the hi-hat) it would come back and tap the surface for an extra hit. That could be minimized by lowering the minimum velocity, but then it seemed like I couldn't get a consistently loud tone. So I solved one problem with adjustments to the sensitivity and created a lesser problem. Maybe you can get rid of both problems with the right settings, or maybe not. The set is highly configurable and that is fortunate since the out of the box settings are probably not going to be entirely to your liking. You can, of course, adjust the sample triggered by each pad and then adjust what that sample sounds like (raising and lowering pitch and other things; download a copy of the manual for more info). The thing you're going to spend the most time tweaking is the velocity settings for each pad. This is different than volume (which can also be adjusted). Velocity is how hard you hit the drum. MIDI velocity goes from 0 to 127. If you hit the pad hard, you might want a 127 or you might not. You might want moderate hits to generate higher velocity. Since the pads have a very fake and sometimes limited velocity response, you're going to want to edit it to match your playing style and maybe to match the drum programs on your computer if you're recording MIDI. You'll probably edit the snare the least since the more expensive white pad is the most realistic pad in the kit. The kick drum required extensive editing to get it mostly right. The hi-hat was ok after tweaking but mostly a lost cause. I tried playing Soundgarden's Outshined and it was just not going to work. Again, you'd need a 3 grand kit (or Zildjian electric cymbals!) to make that happen. For all the negatives I've listed, the kit does work and if you need the quiet of v-drum kit, it's well worth considering if this is the top of your price range. It's wonderful to be able to play at 2 am and practice experimental things without feeling like everyone is listening. The snare drum is fairly dynamic, the bass drum can be tweaked and you can get by on the rest if need be.

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