My Alesis DM10 Seems To Have Fallen Apart In Less Than Four Months...

Kez

Junior Member
So, I bought an Alesis DM10 Studio Kit from the site GAK.com back in February, and initially I couldn't be happier with it. The only small complaint seemed to be that the rubber rims on the pad seemed to be eroding rather quickly, but the kit was still playable so I thought nothing of it at the time.

Then, about a month after having bought the kit, my kick drum died on me. It began missing hits, and then failed to trigger completely. I experimented with connecting the pad with different cables to ensure it was a faulty cable, and also plugging different tom pads into the port reserved for the kick drum to ensure the module wasn't experiencing any faults. Once I'd exhausted all possibilities, I phoned Alesis, who were surprised the kick had died so soon and sent out another kick drum in the mail with no fuss at all. Great, I thought, and got back to my daily practice.

About another month passes, and exactly the same thing happens to the kick, but also the single-zone crash cymbal. To add insult to injury, the module's MIDI output stopped working as well, although all it's other functions seemed to be working as usual. Again, I tried all the same tests to make sure it was faulty pads, and again it seemed that it was (the crash cymbal was visibly pretty battered too, and had a big split in the rubber at it's base). So, once again, I call Alesis who again express surprise that it's all died on me so soon. They suggest I contact my supplier, GAK, and when I contact them they offer to send it over to Alesis for testing. (Seemed bizarre to me that Alesis didn't just cut out the middle man and offer to do that, but, ah well, what do I know?)

At this point I have two dead kick drums, so was kind of tempted to open one up and see if I could see what went wrong. I am a total novice when it comes to electronics though and kind of thought I might make it worse (plus I didn't want to invalidate my warranty), so I packed up both kick drums along with the broken cymbal and the module to send off to Alesis. It's gone for about a week, then when it all returns on a Wednesday afternoon, I plug in all the fixed parts and start playing. The MIDI output is fine, the kick drum sounds great and they appear to have given me an entirely new crash cymbal. Great! So I play it for a bit on Wednesday, have a pretty solid session on Thursday and then Friday morning, the kick drum dies. AGAIN.

At this point I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do. I still have the other spare kick drum pad that they fixed (and it works) but I'm reluctant to hit it with any kind of force considering how quickly the other one perished. It also boggles my mind that so much could go wrong with this kit in a matter of months; if I'd been bashing away on this thing for a couple of years I'd kinda expect to see some wear and tear but after 4 months just seems like shoddy equipment to me. I've thought about phoning Alesis again, but at this point I'm really not sure what they could do to help. I've half a mind to just contact GAK and ask for a refund, which I don't really want to do as when the kit works, it plays like a dream - I just don't want it to all die on me once the warranty has expired and leave me stranded with an unplayable kit. If any of you have any advice here it would be greatly appreciated!

I should add, I've been playing the kit for at least 2 hours a day since I got it, and I've been working on my double kick technique and blastbeats, which I think may have something to do with it breaking so soon. I would have hoped the kit would be able to withstand playing styles like this, but maybe not. I did a fair bit of research before buying the kit, looking at various user reviews etc. and I didn't really find anything questioning the DM10's durability. Have any of you encountered similar problems with this kit? And could any of you recommend any other electric kits that are more suited to heavy hitting styles?

Thanks for your time!
 
Since you got no replies yet, maybe you want to post the same question in DMdrummer.com which is the unofficial Alesis forum.

I have heard about the rubber rims problem before: http://www.hellfiredrums.com/alesis-dm10-pro-kit-review-part-1-of-2/
quote "I do think the rubber on the rims is way too soft. Because of this, if you are a heavy hitter, they are not going to last long. Mine were starting to spilt after a couple hours of heavy use."

As you're breaking kick pads and a cymbal too, I suspect you may be a heavy hitter :) But even if you are I think you may expect a kick pad to last longer than 2 days.

What is your batter like? Does Alesis recommend any specific batter for the pad? If your batter is not the problem, next time the pad breaks ask them to upgrade it to something more sophisticated (I don't know if they have anything) and pay the balance.

You could also try turning up the volume, maybe it makes you hit more softly.

Last advice would be get a Roland or a Yamaha as we told you from the beginning! (sorry, couldn't resist :))
 
Unfortunately, much as we oft advise people not buy Alesis (or any Medeli-derived kit) - people do.

It's mainly the design and build quality of the pads - they're designed to be hit, are aren't up to it. The piezos break / the cables come off the piezos / the supporting plates crack and fail / the foam columns come away, collapse or de-nature.

Piezos are cheap and easy to replace, being £$€0.50 each - and you could end up with a better pad if you do replace them,

Alesis kits are cheap - but involve soldering iron maintenance in return.

They also - because the the build quality - are not up to metal/blast-type drumming.
 
Alesis DM10's are absolute crap. I break mine on a weekly basis. Gave up on constantly re-soldering the pad wires (Incredibly thin & fragile) & bought some Roland ones.
The only good part of the DM10 is the module.
 
No, because of high midi latency (that is about 3 times as long as on Roland modules). (Assumed you don't want these ridiculous module plastic sounds regarding acoustic drum emulation).
Never had any problems with latency. Only use it to trigger EZDrummer :)
 
I highly recommend to newbies not to play and learn with (and hence adapt to) a software drumming latency of more than 10 milliseconds (though they even won't detect 15 or 20 ms). ;) (You definitely are beyond 10 ms with Alesis/Medeli modules regarding the whole latency chain!)
Been recording with it for months now supplying drum tracks for bands. Zero problems encountered :)
 
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