Let’s say that your kid has the potential of being good at playing the drum or you, the parents decide to go a little serious about purchasing a drum set for your kid. Which one to buy? Acoustic or electric?
In the earlier days, people tend to view electric drum sets as a replacement for the uncontrollable volume of an acoustic drum that you can’t put in the house. So without a doubt, you know which one to go for. Now that the electric drum has gone so far in terms of technology, we can start to view the electric drum as a separate entity. Just like electric guitar and acoustic guitar or keyboard and piano.
Information overload is a real phenomenon for many shoppers and can lead to poorer decision-making
Poven
Acoustic drum
It’s all depends on what you want to achieve. Do you want your kids to improve in touch and play, to be able to play those wide dynamic of jazzy music to pop or rock?, then acoustic drum is one to go for. You can only get one set of sound with given drum skins, wood shells and cymbals. Now it’s you to learn how to practice to make it sound nice. Remember this, a good player can manipulate drum sound. However, you can always change skins, cymbal and drum sticks to find new sound. Customising your drum can be fun and worth experiencing. There are many amateur or pros drummer often add on different type of snares, cymbals and pedals and still retain their basic drum set. You can enjoy this for many years to come.
Electric drum
If you are looking for having more fun to play during your early stage of practice, electric drum is the way to go. Having so many features such as play-along-song, metronome, coaching feature, wide variety of sound and percussions will certainly keep you occupied on your drum for many hours. If you play long enough, you will get the idea of how different tone wood sounds like, how different drum size sounds like and how different tuning sounds like. Kids who are shorter is good to have electric drum set because it can be adjusted lower in height. And the biggest thanks is to the controllable volume, kids doesn’t have to worry of hurting their ears and you can enjoy play at night.
Budgeting for Acoustic Drum
If you are in Malaysia, an acoustic set will begin around thousand plus Ringgit including cymbals. Looks attractive to many or maybe you? Well, please don’t go for that. If you are serious about your kid’s improvement, please don’t get this. Firstly, it’s sound horrible til you wouldn’t want to play. Secondly is it the size is not standard. Third, it will fall apart very quickly. Just don’t buy something that will turn your interest off and waste of money when things start to break apart due to those cheap metal, screws and toy-ish plastic skins.
Preferably go far somewhere above 3 thousand plus and above drum set (without cymbal). At this range, you are getting a standard size drum, the right tone wood, standard hardware and real drum skin. Here is something tricky that you need to know. A standard drum set often comes without cymbals and throne. This is a normal practice from all drum manufacturer. Moreover, drum manufacturer and cymbal manufacturer are always different.
If you go for higher price range such as 5 to 9 thousand Ringgit, you will be getting a better tone wood shell, better hardware all around and better colour. In some cases, some drum manufacturer will offer you additional toms which makes the set significantly larger and pleasing to the eye and yet the price are okay. Just be aware that they will offer you lower spec tone wood but more tom. You need to decide what feature do you want? Just bear in mind, for long run, skins, cymbals and hardware are all changeable but drum shells are not.
Budgeting for Electric Drum
Electric drum seems easier to purchase. Just don’t go for anything lower than 2 thousand Ringgit. It’s starting to look and feel like toy-ish, easily broken apart, cheap sound and bad playability. Don’t ruin your interest with this.
The higher price you go, the better feature you will get. The one that is most obvious is the mesh head. It’s like a net that mimic the bounciness of actual drum skin. This is important for your kids to get the touch right. Cheaper set will give you rubber pad. Secondly is the module which is the brain for everything. It houses numerous sound, play-along song file, metronome, coaching feature, connectivity with computer, Bluetooth, editing feature and external audio in/out plugs. Some can accept expansion such as additional cymbals or drum. You may also wanna look out for the drum rack that each manufacture and model provide to you. The higher price you go, the bigger the rack and hence, the better you can position each drum to suits you needs and size. Take not that that there are some model that unadjustable and please don’t go for that.
Most electric drum doesn’t come with drum throne. It’s like a standard practice by drum manufacturer or maybe it’s about packaging or shipping matter. Be prepare to spare more for one. Playing drum with headphone seems like a good solution but imagine wearing it for long hour. You will get tired on your neck and the cable that tangling cable can be very annoying because playing drum require large movement. So the next best solution is to get a speaker. You can buy speaker that specifically made for drum or PA speaker or keyboard speaker. They will provide you the right sound. If you are ought to get something that provides bigger volume as like an acoustic drum set, go for a higher power one. But don’t be surprise, but can cost as much as your electric drum set. If you re finding other alternative such as plugging your drum into your hifi system or multimedia speaker?, forget it. It will blow your speaker in the matter of minutes.
In long run, you must accept the fact that electric drum set can obsolete and no longer producing a certain spare parts. Service is also important. Ask around and see which manufacturer are providing a better service, how expensive is the repair and how fast they do their jobs. Anyone with experience can give you a general answer. And for this reason, please don’t simply purchase one from other country from unreliable source.
Conclude
All-in-all, it’s good to go and see for yourself a real drum rather than just browsing on the internet. With your eye, you can tell how big is the size, how well the material is, and how good the color is compared to pictures. Remember, the picture always looks better. What is written on the product feature is only good. It can’t tell you whether this is suitable for you or not. Finally, internet sales are just to sell you things. Be sure you talk to someone with experience.
