Music Gaming Goodness: Rock Band 2 Rocks The House

The Instruments: The Premium Drum Kit

The bottom line is that the ION Drum Rocker (the premium Rock Band 2 kit) is better than the standard kit for gamers who are really into drumming with Rock Band. But it might not be the best solution for everyone, and drummers might just hate parts of it.

Wow, this actually looks like an electronic drum kit. Maybe that's because it is...

The kit comes with 6 triggers (4 pads and 2 cymbals), a foot switch, an adjustable rack, and a controller into which all the parts connect. A third cymbal can be ordered. The rack (and thus positions of all the triggers) is adjustable. In order to make small adjustments, pads can be moved up and down (or in and out) on their mount points; to make large adjustments, the positions of arms on the rack need to be changed.

So many bolts to adjust ... Lucky I always keep my drum key drill bit in my pocket.

But we lose something important with all the added flexibility and configurability of the premium kit: the ability to quickly adjust to multiple people. The standard kit includes very quick and easy height adjustment that can be used to adapt easily when more than one person wants to play the drums. In a party game environment, this is something that might end up being essential for people get the most out of their gaming experience.

The back of the brain. Note the mount to the rack. All the pads have these and can move that much.

There is some flexibility in the mounding rods the drum pads are attached to that gives you some flexibility (depending on how you set it up). But if you need to drastically adjust the height of the premium kit (say if you have a small kid and a tall adult playing) you'll need to loosen multiple tension rods with a drum key, move multiple bars up or down, and then re tighten things. It's not quick or simple. Yes, if there is one drummer in the house, setting it up perfectly can be easier and more rewarding, but if you throw multiple cooks into the kitchen you're best option will be to get it somewhere between what everyone needs/wants. And in that case, you lose a lot of the advantage of the premium kit.

It ain't no V-Drums, but these pads are sweet compared to the standard kits.

There are plenty of other good things about the kit though. The pads are bouncier, which makes playing less of a chore, especially for those fast rolls. The cymbals feel a little flat (they absorb the impact and don't bounce back much) but if you aren't doing extended rolls on them there isn't really a problem here. But the real advantage (and downfall) of the premium kit is the kick pedal.

Rather than using a Roland TD-8 style pad attached to a real kick pedal, the premium kit makes use of a foot switch that, to go back to the Roland example, would normally be used as a hi-hat pedal. The pedal is very responsive but also really light. Meaning it doesn't take much effort to push it down, but it still pops back up pretty quickly. The problem drummers will have with it is that it doesn't bounce. I'll talk about that in a second though.

The kick pedal that comes with the premium kit is immensely better than the one that comes with the standard Rock Band or Rock Band 2 drums. It isn't perfect, but the advantage can't be overstated. Because of the reduced effort required to play with the foot-switch-turned-kick-pedal and the very small amount of movement required to open and close the switch, gamers will be able to play much faster and more easily for a longer period of time. For musicians, while the pedal is still a huge improvement over the standard offering, there is a lot to be desired.

When playing with a real kick pedal and hitting an actual drum, there is a lot of reaction going on. With either Rock Band setup, you need to expend energy in both pushing the pedal down and lifting your foot up. With a real kick pedal, you can use the bounce to remove a lot of the effort required to to play fast bass drum beats. For simple beats, you will likely expend more energy when using a real kick, but quick double hits much harder than they need to be with Rock Band. And don't get me started on those thrash metal songs. My leg feels like it is going to fall off after some of that nonsense, and it gets really frustrating not having a better kick pedal option.

Some drummers may be able to get over the problems with using a hi-hat pedal as a kick drum, but I really just want to go with a Roland TD-8, a kickbox and my pearl pedal and be done with it. For me, the ION (premium kit) kick pedal, while better than the RB1/RB2 kick pedal, still isn't very good. Non-drummers will likely feel different and will more than likely love the upgraded kick option. But then almost anything is better than the stock piece of junk.

There are also some reliability issues. We've heard tales of some people having the kick pedal stick in the down position. And in a very disappointing turn of events, our pedal actually broke. There is a flimsy metal piece attached to the pedal that depresses an actuator located on the base to close the circuit. This metal piece snapped off while playing a rather simple and straight forward song. I play barefoot and while I'm sure I play a little harder than most non-drummers, I learned on an older Roland electronic kit back in the early-mid 90's so I've never been very heavy footed.

We thought about attaching something a little stronger to the pedal, but we rethought a repair attempt, as it is likely the flexible metal piece was used to absorb high impact and prevent damage to the switch itself. The fact that the actuator itself is mechanical leaves the ION kick pedal prone to breakage in a way that the RB1 and RB2 pedals just aren't. Sure, the horrible construction on both RB pedals can lead to breakage of the pedal itself (remember, the hinge of the RB2 pedal is still just plastic, and that is where one of our other pedals broke), but the mechanism that actually closes the circuit is actually much more likely to break on the ION pedal.

We were able to take the actuator and magnet out of one of our broken RB pedals and build it into a real kick pedal and practice pad set up with no problem. Others have taken their broken RB pedals and repaired them using wood or a metal plate or more plastic. Sometimes it's ugly, but it usually works. With the ION pedal, we were able to rig it up to keep functioning, but we're still waiting on a replacement.