Yamaha DD65-K Digital Drum Machine with Touch-Sensitive Drum and Foot Pads
£129.99
- 230 GM compatible voices plus 20 drum phrases
- 50 preset drum kits plus 3 custom kits
- 8 touch-sensitive pads plus 2 foot pedals (kick is touch sensitive)
- Two foot switches included, kick drum switch is touch sensitive
- POWER SUPPLY NOT INCLUDED
Great little idea! - I purchased the Yamaha DD65 for my two daughters to play around with over the 6 weeks holidays. I must say its a great toy, the drum sounds are almost but not quite realistic but very close. The configuration of the pads is excellant and gives a very realist drum kit set up. Can t wait to see what Yamaha comes up with yet, if they can make the drum sounds more realist i could even visualise real drummers using these for smaller gigs where space is at a premium. To sum up they are a great space saver, fun, comes with a volume control and add a real snare stand/drum seat to the unit and it looks like a serious piece of equipment.
Yeah, not bad at all. - I also have to chip in - as that first review doesnt do it justice. I got one for Xmas, I took lessons years when I was 15, now have kids and no space for a full kit. I love it, the speaker is a bit dodgey, but sounds much better on headphones. Ive tried to put it thru my guitar amp, just sounds dirty.I can see a slight problem with the Hi-Hat. The manual says it plays 32 sounds continously, but I sometime dont hear the hi-hat. Cymbals are very difficult to replicate - only professional Digital drum machines they dont even try and use real cymbals. Bass drum could be doing with a bit louder, and you have to make sure you have to try and hit the drums with each pressure - otherwise - say the your banging away on the hihat and snare on the same beat- if you hit the hi hat harder - sometimes the sensor for the snare thinks its just a vibration from the hit hand and doesnt sound. You can change the sensitivity thou - or just try to hit them with the same pressure. Only other thing - is dont buy it under the impression that you can just plug headphones in and not bother anyone else in the house - I did - They tell me is just sounds worse as can just hear rythmical banging - rather than an actual beat. (We do have a modest sizedl house thou)Dont let this put you off thou, Ive had hours of fun with it - especially with plugging in my iPod and playing along. Theres lots of features that ll keep you entertained. Very good for the price. If you want something to learn on and just have fun - this is it. Could do early gigging also with the write PA s etc.
The only turkey this christmas went in the oven - I have to say that the Yamaha DD65-K is perfect for a first time introduction to drumming, dare I say toy? It doesn t take up much space, it has a volume control and it s fun!It doesn t look like a professional drumkit, it doesn t sound like a professional drumkit but... it s not a professional drumkit, not even semi-professional!Buy it, bang it, enjoy it. If you then find you out that you like drumming buy a drumkit.
not such a turkey! - This is my first review as I have never felt any reason to put one up before but felt that I must give another view to the one already here. A few months ago I bought a DD65 drum set for my 10 year old son as I didn t want to have a big drum kit in the house but he really wanted this. He absolutely loves it! it was a perfect choice for him as a beginner and fits easliy into his bedroom. I m no expert but the drums sound great to me and he and his friends are always playing with it. He s now started drum lessons at school and his teacher is happy for him to play on the DD65 for the time being. If he keeps at it I will buy him a real drum kit but at the moment he is making great progress and I am really pleased with it. I didn t really understand all of the other review but we chose it as an first drum kit and we d recommend the DD65 to anyone wanting to try out the drums and have a bit of fun.
WARNING - DO NOT BUY THIS TURKEY!!! - The DD-65 on first glance looks like an excellent idea. It has built-in drums and drum pads, making it a compact way to play electronic drums. It is expandable to use proper electronic drum pedals rather than the pathetic pedals supplied with it, so the buyer feels they are making a wise purchase. It seems to have everything you need: built-in rhythms, drum pads, expandable, with its own speakers and on-board drums.The concept is great, but there are huge problems in the implementation. First of all, the onboard drum sounds are poor. While some of the sounds are passable, the vast majority are extremely bad. The cymbals are simply the very worst example of cymbals I have EVER, EVER heard on a drum machine. I have drum machines and keyboards dating back to the eighties that have better cymbal sounds than this. The cymbals just sound nasty. Its a shame, because not all of the sounds are bad - the percussion sounds are quite good. The drum kit sounds look varied on paper, but actually they are almost identical when you come to listen to them. The Hihat is particularly poor, lacking any kind of sizzle with the closed hi-hat being far too sloppy.In short, the onboard sounds are so poor they make playing the machine as a serious electronic drum set impossible. The only way to get some decent sounds out of it is to connect to another sound source via MIDI. Most serious users who purchased the previous DD-55 used it to connect to an external system via MIDI. That way you get the benefit of the hardware with none of the awful onboard sounds. So I did just that with the new DD-65. Except that proved to be less than satisfactory.Yamaha have put in a HUGE design flaw into this product as far as MIDI is concerned. They are taking a great deal of heat for it on the forums on the internet, and word has amongst serious users its starting to cost them sales in a big way. What is this design flaw? It concerns the hihat MIDI settings.Let me explain. I connected the DD-65 up to Cubase 3 loaded with ezdrummer. ezdrummer is a superb drum-kit replicating piece of software by Toontrack generally recognised to be the very best reproduction of a drum kit on the market. People with expensive e-drum setups use the ezdrummer software. I thought I d give it a try with the DD-65.At first, all went well. The DD-65 allowed me to play ezdrummer using all the pads, with very little tweaking. I soon had some good sounds coming from the setup. And then I hit a snag. At first I thought it was going to be a small snag, but it turned out to be a real killer. Simply put, there is a MASSIVE design flaw in the DD-65.The flaw is as follows. When playing the hihat pad, you can open or shut the hi hats with the supplied pedal. Hold the pedal down, you get a closed hihat, let your foot off the pedal and you get an open hihat. So far, so good. But it only works when playing the onboard sounds. When I tried connecting it up through Cubase, the hihat pedal no longer worked properly. I could not close and open the hats. They were either fully closed or fully open, but there was no way to adjust them. I looked like crazy for a solution, thinking it must be a MIDI problem, but there was no solution to be had. So I contacted Yamaha, and they told me it was a specification of the unit. In short, you could not use the unit to control external hihat sounds.There is no way to bypass this. Even if you bought the improved hihat pedal seperately, you would still have the same problem. In essence, Yamaha have designed the unit so it will not transmit the correct MIDI data for the hihat. I know this because they actually sent me an email telling me so. Needless to say, a lot of people on the internet forums are returning this product because it is flawed. You can t use the onboard sounds because they really are awful, and you can t use external sounds because the MIDI is badly implemented. In essence, its a Turkey.A big, stinking, fat Turkey that costs a premium price.Frankly, words fail me. I don t know what on Earth Yamaha were thinking when they crippled this units MIDI implementation. They must have known it was going to cost them sales. Ironically, I ve heard that the previous incarnation the DD-55 did not have this problem (though I ve only heard it from one person, so I can t be sure.) This means the DD-55 will be highly sought after, and the DD-65 will sink without trace.No one is buying this product. Its already going around on internet sites that this is a turkey. Yamaha have released a nasty piece of kit with this, and the irony is, they almost had it right. Had the MIDI been implemented correctly, I would have been able to recommend it on the strength that it can be connected to outside sound sources. As it stands, it sounds awful as a standalone product, and its crippled in terms of MIDI implementation, making it useless for controlling external sounds. My guess is that Yamaha will be forced to release a follow-up with the MIDI implementation corrected. Until they do that, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES BUY THIS MACHINE. You have been warned. If you re still tempted to part with your cash after being warned, then there is no reaching you. I suspect this will sell a lot of units amongst people who don t know any better. But bear in mind that there is a lot of pressure on Yamaha to fix the MIDI implementation, so they could well be bringing out a corrected product further down the line. The question you have to ask yourself is: do you want to rush out and buy a crippled, premium price product, or wait for a fixed one? The choice is yours.