Today, I needed to get out of the house.

Suffice to say, the last few days have been kind of trying – life has a way of testing you to the hilt, and it’s kind of been like that. Its been the kind of time I’ve been glad to have friends and family around, and a wonderful Wife.  But, I needed a change of scene, so I drove to the music shop with aformentioned wonderful Wife and took the Alesis ControlPad back (again).

Needless to say, I was kind of pissed off that this second one still didnt work, and I made that apparent, especially when they were initially going to give me just store credit rather than the full refund I was entitled to. However, after a (tiny) bit of heated debate on the content of the Sales Of Goods Act, the whole scene calmed down and I asked for, and was granted a full refund. As I was about to take it, the Manager of the place said “How’s about if I do you a deal?”. I was skeptical at this point, as the only thing remotely similar to what I wanted was a Roland Drum controller, and those things are well outside my price range.

However! What was to come next completely blew me away. Due to the inconvenience of me driving back and forth three times to buy and exchange various ControlPad units, the manager offered me a deal I couldnt refuse…

The Legacy DD502 (usually £249), for £175.

If you don’t know what the Legacy DD502 is, then wonder no longer…

It’s basically what I actually wanted from the start, but was, until now, out of my price range. It’s a lower range (but suprisingly good!) electronic drum kit. It is as near as I’m going to get in the next few years to owning a set of V-Drums! It has a set of four normal drum pads (snare and 3 toms), a Kick drum with pedal, a Hi-Hat controller pedal, and three cymbals (Hi-Hat, Crash and Ride by default). It also comes with a basic little drum machine box into which all of these plug. The machine has a fair selection of kits to play with, with some bad MIDI toons to play along to, and customizable banks into which you can assign your own choice of the available drums, and construct your own kits from the 200+ sounds available. It also has the all-important MIDI-out port for using the kit to trigger drums in Logic, Battery 3 etc…

Not bad!!!!

To put it mildly, I almost bit his arm off for that price! Talk about goodwill gesture! I’ve only just ut the thing together and had a quick bash around on it, but for the price I’ve got to say I’m impressed. Of course, compared to the higher-qualit Roland V-Drums, it doesnt stand a chance, but as a starter electronic kit, and for triggering sounds, I rekon it’s gonna be a winner.

First impressions are good. The whole thing isn’t built badly at all. The frame is aluminium, and the fittings, whilst being plastic, seem to be strong enough to withstand a good bashing. The pedals are particularly good for the price, with the bass pedal being a proper pedal with chain action and everything. Apart from the black fittings, there seems to be a reasonable of metal in this thing (as I can testify carrying it in from the car!). The pads themselves are black plastic surrounds with relatively convincing skin-feel surfaces. The surfaces themselves are actually ‘real’ drum skins, and dont have a bad feel at all. There’s enough rebound for a reasonably nice feel for flams etc, and they’re much better than the rubber pads that usually come with the lower end kits.

The cymbals are plastic too, with foam rubber covering the top surfaces. They’re on ‘real’ cymbal stands, so do actually rock when hit, giving a better illusion than many other cheaper kits. Overall the cymbals are a bit loud off the bat, but I know these can be altered individually anyway, so I’ll play with that later. Overall, the feel of the kit is very good for the price.

I’m yet to play properly, and also yet to try the MIDI-out for playing drums on the mac, but so far, so good. I’ll report back (with proper photos of the real thing!) in the next few days, so watch this space…!

For more details visit http://www.legacymusicalinstruments.com/productdetails/DD502/

UPDATE: I’ve just found an ebay auction selling the same thing under a different name for an American visitor to the site. Its got a great video demo of this kit – take a look!

http://tinyurl.com/38xjcv