A good drum pad for finger drumming?

[AD Chaos]

I've long been thinking about getting a drum pad of some sort to lay out rhythms -as I'm not a drummer- as that seems to me like the next best thing for 'humanizing' my drum tracks and make them more interesting than some generic midi pattern.

Some dudes at the studio yesterday pointed me to this one:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/nanoPAD2bk/

I can even get it locally, and it not being that expensive is a plus. Nowadays I've been mic'ing a can of coke and tapping on it but transcribing afterwards is sort of a buzz kill (and w/o velocities, much gets lost anyways)..

I have a Korg kb but there's a little bit of latency going on there, besides the synth keys are not well weighed -especially for percussive stuff- and also there's the issue of portability of course.

So what I'm looking for is basically something not very expensive, as portable as possible, velocity-sensitive, with a capacity for recording ideas (MIDI) on the go.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks a bunch

 

[MindMunch]

Heard from many sources that this nano series breaks easily.
If you are on a tight budget and need portability you´re better with an Akai LPD8 http://www.akaipro.com/lpd8 or MPK Mini (if you want a keyboard too) http://www.akaipro.com/mpkmini

 

[AD Chaos]

Those Korg nano reviews are indeed terrible, quality seems to be very poor. Too bad because those seem the most versatile. The roll/flam/hold functions caught my eye:



LPD8 seems to be much higher quality and good entry-level device for what I'm looking for. And besides acoustic drums, seems like quite the nifty tool to have around.

 

[ForHerDeadEyes]

DIY, I made this one..
I just got a couple of piezo summers.. They are inexpensive.. 1 - 3$ maybe less..
I didn't take them out of their plastic shells so.. that drags down the quality.. (bad velocity and hit)
Now I know how to make better ones..
Gonna make a kit someday..

http://www.4shared.com/video/Ljf4nqv_/Trigger_test.html

That's my crappy first test..
Just a tip if you don't want to spend a lot of munny..

 

[lordofthestring]

I've used everything under the sun to trigger my VSTi drum software and still always go back to a keyboard. Check out a few of my videos

 

[Scott Horner]

I have a Korg microPAD and have had no issues with it. It's a bit on the expensive side, though.