Cheapest live trigger method with custom sample ability?

[kev]

Yo dudes,

Just a quick one. Looking to trigger bass drums live at the moment. Wondering what the most hassle free/cheap kit is available out there right now. I am tempted to grab a D4, but that obviously has no custom loading ability and is a fairly out of the ark solution, although we all love the samples.

Hoping for something lightweight perhaps, with the ability to house a handful of kicks so the drummer could tweak in the set. This might not exist yet though and I suspect more rack gear is on the cards...

 

[JonWormwood]

DM pro?

 

[Potshot]

Roland SPD-S

 

[JeffTD]

SPD-S, doubles as a sampler for 808's and other fun gig shit.

 

[Manicompression]

I would stay away from the dm-pro. I know a really fantastic drummer who has one, when i asked him about the sample loading capabilities he said they were a joke, that the latency rendered it useless. Im sure its internal bass drum sounds are fine but at that point id just save money and pick up a d4

 

[GeertSamuel]

SPD-S even has 2 trigger inputs, so that will work, and has loads of customizable options.


I've got a D4 just for triggering, and it works perfect, but unfortunatelly can't load custom samples.

 

[amarshism]

Spd-s is standard touring band equipment.

 

[raisedfist]

SPD-S is great but my mates one seems to have a glitch. Its great if you are just using it as a kick trigger and a few short samples here and there but if you are using loads of longish samples and the kick trigger when you hit the kik it stops the samples. Only did it 3/4 times in like 20 shows but for the life of me I looks at those menus and read the manual to see if there was a setting on somewhere that I had missed but no.
IMO after pissing about with the SPD-S and the alesis DM-5 I would go for the Alesis as you can mess with the sounds enough to get it sounding good and you know its rock solid; I'm running one in my band with a kick trigger and tom1 output controlling my laptop running reaper. Seems the more stable option in my mind.

 

[CharlesMonroe1989]

SPD-S is useless for Kicktriggering if youre not playing any oldschool rock or sth. without fast DB parts. It just kills everything if you are playing 16ths at 120bpm. All played samples just stop then.

And it happened to me that it died without any warning. It just says "memory damaged". Roland told me the repair would cost almost 370€ for a new mobo.

cant tell what the new SPD-SX is like but i heard that there are no big changes made except for the effects. I would use it for simple Samples and not for triggering. Subdrops work well. But i dont want to pay 600€ for a simple wave player...

EDIT: I couldnt test it myself but this looks very interesting:

 

[GeertSamuel]

SPD-S is great but my mates one seems to have a glitch. Its great if you are just using it as a kick trigger and a few short samples here and there but if you are using loads of longish samples and the kick trigger when you hit the kik it stops the samples. Only did it 3/4 times in like 20 shows but for the life of me I looks at those menus and read the manual to see if there was a setting on somewhere that I had missed but no.

The SPD-S can play about 8 samples simultaniously. If he has a kick sample installed with to much sustain it's easy to get them it overloaded on the fast kick parts. Most of the time this will stop the first sample that was started. It's also very important to correctly install the sample on the SPD-S since it has lots of variables!

I never had any problem with it. I used it in church a lot, we had a backing track play, I used it as a kick trigger and used the pads as additional percussion, never a problem.

 

[bryan_kilco]

The SPD-S can play about 8 samples simultaniously. If he has a kick sample installed with to much sustain it's easy to get them it overloaded on the fast kick parts. Most of the time this will stop the first sample that was started. It's also very important to correctly install the sample on the SPD-S since it has lots of variables!

I never had any problem with it. I used it in church a lot, we had a backing track play, I used it as a kick trigger and used the pads as additional percussion, never a problem.

We've tried a bunch of times to get our SPD-S to trigger kick samples, with not much luck at all. It would show a signal, but no sound. Then we got sound, but it was stopping other samples (we do have a few long synth type samples in some of our songs). Just couldn't make it work.

 

[heshian46]

Haven't tried it myself, but I would also say the Alesis Sample Pad. Its the cheapest unit out there right now that allows you to load your own samples. Not sure how it holds up to quick 16th note patterns though.