NPD: Trick Dominator - Initial impressions, to be followed by periodic review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niBMcjGzJY0

Here's a video demo. I held my phone in my hand and recorded, so nothing complicated or technical. No use of hands though (except laughably at one part), so hopefully bonus points for demonstrating how easy it is to balance on these pedals :D

I hope the quality of the audio is sufficient to demonstrate how nice these pedals are for playing fast. I wasn't really blazing, it's around 1.30 am here. If everyone's nice, I'll make a "proper" video this Sunday if I can. Maybe play along to a track I'm working on ;)

- Reggae Mangle
 
Six month review

Six months are up and I thought it would be a good idea to update this review. Over this period of time, I can honestly say I've had a love-hate relationship with the Trick Dominators. It finally got to the point of selling them cheaply.

The first month with any pedal is always (or should be) a honeymoon period. This is even more so with something like the Dominators, where you've dropped a massive wad of cash and feel the need to justify it. Any issues with the pedal are glossed over. All our worries can be tweaked away with the turn of an allen key.

I've always felt any review by anybody within this honeymoon period should be suspect, since we all feel the need to show off or rationalise the money we spent. At $599 + shipping + customs, I wasn't ready to give anyone a chance to say my pedals sucked. Or say so myself.

With respect to my own review: I moved on to the Trick pedals from a Pearl Eliminator chain/belt drive pedal. Unfortunately, I could never do a proper A/B comparison between the two, because I sold the Pearl before I bought the Dominators. So I could only rely on my residual memories of the Pearl when trying to do a comparison. These were definitely better... Right?

There's always a significant transition in feel when switching between these kinds of pedals, which can be attributed to the "elasticity" of a chain linkage or a woven strap vis-a-vis a chunk of metal as a linkage. I immediately started out playing fast and boy, did it feel faster than the old Pearl. Perhaps this was due to the shine factor of a brand new pedal versus a two-year old piece. And perhaps it was true. At any rate, I honestly believed it was.

In month two, I started to really get into the feel of the pedal. And it was about this time that I started running into resistance in the dream-like state I was in. During running double bass, I would suddenly feel a pedal move in a different way. I would be unable to play speedy single pedal patterns. All the notes would be blurred together and lose definition. I'd grin and tweak and start all over again. New settings, new feel. I'd lock on to something for a while, then switch to something else in the same day.

By month three, I was ready to get rid of the infernal Dominators. This was a rip-off. I had been cheated. The compression spring technology was faulty. Trick CEO Mike Dorfman was evil. I needed to offload these pedals quietly. Stealthily. Pawn them off to some unsuspecting sap. I needed a "real" upgrade, to a Pearl Demon Drive. Or an Axis longboard, George Kollias and Derek Roddy use those.

Of course, with anything as expensive as the Trick Dominators, it's difficult to make a second-hand sale. Even more so if you don't want to stomach a big loss. I started out with a small cut in the price. But eventually, I decided just getting rid of them would be sufficient. A couple of hundred dollars out isn't as bad as around $1000 out.

By month four, I realised this could take time. I kept looking out for potential buyers, but kept playing at home. I wasn't going to let these pedals keep me from my dream of being a good drummer. Stupid pedals, I kept on playing beautifully and then all of a sudden it would shake violently or stutter or choke and the music was gone and I was a loser that had spent mega bucks on defective technology.

In month five, everything changed. I stopped thinking about playing these pedals and started playing them. The constant switching of settings had stopped. My feet (I play barefoot) learnt how to anticipate the bounce of the beater and react in a way that the motion was not interrupted or momentum altered. I synchronised my body rhythms with the flow of the pedals and was no longer forcing my playing but playing naturally.

About a week ago, I started leaning forward a little when playing. A subtle change in posture, but the impact on my double bass playing has me looking at these pedals with a tinge of shame. I even feel sorry for Trick Drums, like my attitude has been a betrayal.

It's kind of funny how we sometimes get a lump in our throats after buying something, Buyer's regret can be almost painful, especially for those of us that can't afford something better.

Does buyer's regret get better with time? I'm not sure, but I have learnt a valuable lesson about pedals, something that is often repeated on these forums, but which I think needs to be repeated once more for emphasis in this review: give your pedals time with any setting. It takes time to acclimatize to something new. Don't blame your tools.

The Trick Dominator double bass pedal is hard to confuse with other products on the market. The compression spring technology isn't unique to the Trick family of products, but it has been updated to fit into the modern drummer's arsenal of tools. What does it bring that's new to the table?

For one, an optimal balance between speed and power: the metal beaters contribute to this somewhat, but the acceleration characteristics of the pedal and what I would describe as a "heavy" feel, but little in way of resistance.

Second on my list of positives would have to be a mix of "pedal bounce" and "playability". The compression spring provides for a very swift and predictable return from the drum head, with little chance of the pedal returning slower. "Feeling" this bounce back and adapting my old style of playing to this mechanism, I am able to react more naturally and send the beater back into the head. This works particularly well for the heel-toe style of playing that I adopted when I bought the Dominators, but would work equally well for a motion in which the beater is swung back and forth using the Moeller technique. I find my off (left) leg seems more attuned to an appropriate Moeller application, whereas my good leg still needs work. Go figure. This has opened up new playing possibilities.

Third but not least, the versatility of having a single/double pedal set up should not be under-estimated. Among the pedals I was eyeing prior to my Dominator purchase, I was interested in a couple of models that could not be split into singles, my rationale being that most venues where I would be playing would not have a second bass drum. In hindsight, I now realise that having a separate pedal can be extremely liberating when playing double bass, while having a double bass configuration with minimal lag between the master and slave doesn't lose me gigs. Having a separate pedal has also worked well with my Alesis DM10 setup, which seems unable to handle double bass speeds in excess of 200 bpm on a single pad, as a result of which I was getting a lot of lost hits. Thanks to the Dominator design, I could split into two singles on two separate pads on separate inputs. Problem solved!

I hope this review is of use to someone looking at the Dominators. I plan to do one last update a year from now, with a holistic look at the pluses and minuses of the Dominator. Thanks for reading. And God Bless Mr Mike Dorfman, about whom I had a great many unhappy thoughts that were ill-deserved. Great product, great company Trick Drums and I am sure as word of mouth spreads around, a lot more people are going to realise that a $599 pedal like the Trick Dominator can actually feel like a $1000. You just have to play them like you mean it and stop pretending they will play themselves. Give them time, they will give you service.


Oh. And my Trick Dominators? They're not for sale.
 
Moral of the story; you can read 1000 reviews but you really just need to try your pedals in person before you buy them (it's hard to choose them even in those circumstances).
 
Im going through the same thong right now. They felt great up until about a month ago, i was playing a cheap apex chain pedal and felt more comfortable on it. I've had the tricks for almost 11 months now. Im thinks of selling them. Im so confused lol.
 
Give them some more time! I was really excited to put this together and tried to play faster than usual; Trick Dominator pedals rock!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Apk0IOWyLA&feature=youtu.be

I'm a two year old drummer and an absolute amateur, so you know you can do better ;)

More pictures:

sptu.jpg


9guv.jpg
 
My heads are getting dented by the metal beaters :/ I need to change to something else I guess. This will be highlighted in my next review!
 
Trick Dominator Double Pedal with SB-1 Laser Triggers - Review

Paying $599 for a drum pedal doesn't appeal to many drummers and for a good reason too. There's always been a variety of models available at lower price points, but professional reputations, such as the Pearl Powershifter Eliminators and Tama Iron Cobras.

But as times have changed, so have pedal designs. How many of us knew what a longboard or a direct drive design was capable of before icons like Derek Roddy and George Kollias burst on to the scene, playing faster and more rhythmically than we've ever seen in the last decade. And if you look at established players like Mike Mangini or Mike Portnoy, even these professionals have shifted to longboard designs like the Pearl Demon Drive and Tama Speed Cobra. The advent of pedals like the Axis AL2s meant that the bpm barrier could now be smashed on a daily basis.

This is my one-year review of another one of those $599 pedals, the Trick Dominators, which fit into the same price bracket as the Axis AL2s and the Pearl Demon Drive and are also direct drive pedals. I apologise if this review seems like it's geared toward speed demons. The points I discuss can be applied to a single pedal as well.

What you pay for

The Trick Dominator double pedal is essentially two separate single pedals that can be combined into a drive-shaft driven double bass set. Pedal construction is rugged, having been fabricated from aerospace grade aluminium. The engineering lines were smooth and I was hard-pressed to find any flaws in the manufacturing process. It's a solid mass and while I haven't dropped it, I don't think it could be destroyed unless there was excessive force.

A couple of aspects of the pedals need to be mentioned. Firstly, it's a compression spring driven pedal, as opposed to the expression spring that you see in almost all mass-produced pedals today, including the AL2s and Demon Drives. This means, when you push down the board, a spring is compressed inward and as you take weight off, it expand outward, pushing the board back into place.

One thing I noticed over the one year I had the pedals was that sometimes when I got back behind the kit after a day's rest, it seemed like the pedals were working against me. After a lot of antagonising over this quirk of fate, I came across a workaround: just loosen the compression spring a little, then tighten it back to the same position. The only logic I could put together to explain why this might work was that when a spring is held in a compressed position for a longer period of time, perhaps the energy build up is stored in its coils. Weird, but it worked for me.

Another striking feature about the pedal is the stock beaters, which are made out of aluminium and have a reassuring weight about them. While these beaters were extremely interesting and gave a comforting thwack when they bounced off a head, I eventually replaced them with Iron Cobra rubber beaters when I realised that the metal was damaging my bass drum heads. Perhaps some sort of patch would help, but when I made the shift to different beaters, I was looking at a bit more weight so I believe I made the right choice in switching. Nothing wrong with the stock beaters if you're playing on a house kit!

Thirdly, the latticed base board of the pedals is really interesting. The pedals are quite heavy, I'd say easily 3-4 kg each. The base plate is latticed, which takes off some of the weight. Neither the master, nor slave pedal has spikes; instead, the pedals come with velcro to keep them in place. I found the velcro sent by the manufacturer was insufficient, but it was easy enough to use some of my stock to rectify the situation.

Chasing the voodoo down

I find it most comfortable to set up my pedals with the spring tension maxed out and my drum stool elevated to a point where my feet rest firmly on the pedal, but do not constrict the return motion after I play a note. I devoted the bulk of my time learning heel-toe on this pedal, once I realised it was an energy-efficient way of playing at higher speeds. In this respect, the compression spring suits the style well. This is mainly due to the predicability of the way the footboard will return to zero position after you play a stroke.

I play heel-toe as RT LT RH LH. With a direct drive, your foot motions are translated almost instantaneously into pedal movement. So when I play, I'm able to predict the way in which the board is returning after I hit a stroke and after hitting another stroke with the other beater, a simple flick at the heel catapults the beater back into the drum head. It's not even an exaggerated heel-toe movement, more like playing heel down with a double pumping motion that comes from rocking back and forth on the ball of your foot. At slower tempos, I might even "swivel" on the base of my toes to keep rhythm.

The pedals have a reassuring weight. They won't depress unless you tell them too. I found this a limitation of the Pearl Eliminators I had, not due to any fault of theirs. My poor technique has left me with a lead foot.

Do take a look at the video I posted above. It should give you a good idea of how I've been able to acclimatise to these pedals in a relatively short period and I think it has helped me move into a different zone in terms of my drumming and what I believe I am capable of in a musical context.

The Trick Dominators are clearly capable of blistering speeds. I've been able to lock into speeds of at least 280 bpm, which I wasn't able to do with conventional techniques or conventional pedals. To be fair, I never tried. But the thing about the Dominators' longboard design is that it makes sense to use the additional foot space.

I will Trick you

Being a self-taught drummer, there were no rules to follow when I sat down to learn heel-toe. I saw a few videos on youtube and that was it. Since I don't endorse piracy, I didn't even watch the instructional videos put together by heel-toe stalwarts like Tim Waterson, though I know the name.

One thing I have been working on, based on my learnings, is that the technique lends itself to more than just straight forward double bass. Think about it: you have two feet effectively playing doubles. Suppose you stop playing doubles with one foot and play singles (watch that videos), while continuing to heel-toe the other. Now suppose you reverse the foot playing doubles and the foot playing singles, i.e. have them play the other pattern. Now play singles with both feet.

This opens up a variety of patterns for experimentation. And if you open your mind, more aggressive and intuitive playing could throw up better results. What is more, due to the nature of the heel-toe method, it is less energy-intensive as well, enabling bass pedal work to be sustained for longer durations of time.

Laser beaming hard

Just prior to my one-year anniversary with the Dominators, I ordered a pair of SB1 laser triggers from Trick for the princely sum of, surprise, another $500. When I finally received them and installed them on my pedals, a couple of things struck me.

First, there have been a few complaints about play in the drive shaft of the Dominators, This is primarily due to the space that is left on either side of the direct drive shaft where it connects to the footboard. But what I found is that this is intended by design, to facilitate shifting of the drive linkage further to the right once the laser trigger assembly is installed.

Second, the laser triggers are super cool and super quiet too. I initially tried them on my e-drum kit and was surprised at how responsive they were. Unfortunately, I also found that one of the triggers was more sensitive than the other, perhaps due to the cable I was using or some other external factor. Switching cables around had the expected result.

The biggest impact the laser triggers had for me, however, was the improved triggering. When I was using e-drum bass pads for triggering, I could never play heel up, because the minute I hit the pad, it would register double hits, buzz rolls, etc. At the same time, the sensitivity had to be set so that my heel-toe hits were not rejected. Finding a compromise was frustrating.

With the laser triggers, the problem was solved instantly. Since the trigger is only activated once when the beater stops, there no longer was a problem of double triggering or mishits. I later tried triggering on an acoustic drumkit and the results were even better. It justified the cost of the triggers for me and has allowed me to work on my heel up technique as well, interspersing it with heel-toe.

The bottom line

Trick Drums' Dominator pedals and the SB1 laser trigger accessory might seem like a frighteningly expensive investment in just a pair of drum pedals. But if you're looking at a top-of-the-shelf piece of equipment (this is actually Trick's mid-range pedal, with the top-of-the-line Pro-1V and Bigfoot costing $849) that meets professional requirements, you should consider giving them a whirl.
 
Hey man Excellent review, everything you said about the tricks is spot on. I just picked up a pair of axis al2s to compare to the doms. I honestly cant figure out which pedal is better, I think the sb1 system is better that the e kits though (I haven't tried either, just what I think from viewing both online)
 
When I compared the two systems, I found the advantage of the SB1 over the hammer on the Axis is durability, I've heard about a lot of people snapping the hammer, especially when using the system on a drive shaft-driven double bass pedal. The downside is the cost, which is almost equal to the cost of the Dominator pedal. Also, I find that when I play in most of the jam rooms I go to, the pedals hit hard enough to obviate the need to lug my drum module for practice sessions, though I will use them in larger venues.

As far as reliability, I can't comment on the Axis, since I've never seen them except on youtube. The SB1 eliminated double triggering altogether on my humble e-kit. Because of the fact that it only registers a single hit when the beater stops moving, I've now started learning heel up as well, something I wasn't able to achieve with my electronic kick drumpad because I couldn't adjust it to be sensitive enough for heel-toe, while permitting harder hits from a heel up style. Highly recommend it.

If you can demo the two pedals, I'd strongly advise doing so before making a purchase.
 
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