First show with TDW-20

[Peter W]

I used the TDW 20 for the first time at a live gig. The sound man said it sounded perfect. There were about 300 people there and the music Indian Bangra with a modern funk beat. Ther TDW20 has overcome all the weird resonances from the other modules.

Peter

[saku]

Great! showing the world our drums are up to scratch....

show us videos of the gig!

[Michael Render]

Glad to hear it worked out well. But what weird resonances are you talking about?

[saku]

Glad to hear it worked out well. But what weird resonances are you talking about?

speaking of shows, Michael, did i miss your post-gig report? werent you grooving last friday?

[Peter W]

tdw20

I always found that the td 20 toms would sound good on studio monitors but I quite often got a lack of low mid on live pa's,or extremely unpredictable resonances in the low to low mids. The td 20 snare was quite electronic sounding compared to the tdw20.
I found that the snare and toms on the tdw20 worked great. I have tuned them differently from the factory settings,and they easily translated to my AT M50 headphones,Dynaudio monitors,personal PA,and larger house PA. I have never had this easy of a time. I did change the compression settings and eq.
The kick was good but i was told it was a bit "watery". I think Roland have tried very hard to sound like a mic inside a real kick with 2 heads. For the situation I had,a deep thuddy kick would be best. I used the Low birch. I didn't like the sound with full muffling[weight]. With less muffling,it sounded good but not quite tight and puchy.
I am interested in suggestions for a tight deep punchy kick on the tdw20. I only had the entire kit for a week before the gig,so hopefully i will find something now that I have time.

Peter

[RnR]

Play a tdw20 live yet?

I found that the snare and toms on the tdw20 worked great.

I did change the compression settings and eq.

Good to know..

The toms have always been trouble for me live.

I play live for the first time with the expansion card next week, I will stick with a mostly stock tdw-20 kit.
Hopefully the rest of the band will notice a little difference.

I will tweak it as required once I hear the thing on the sound system.

Any input by others who have played out with the expansion card would be appriciated.

[stickinthemud]

Thanks for the report and the details. Definitely moves the TDW20 up on my want list.

[Rythmstik]

Got my TDW week before last and played it live this past weekend. Installation and import were a breeze.
The sound guys loved it! It was one of our larger gigs w/pro sound and light guys and they ended up only taking a mono feed from the TDW-20 - I tweaked a few levels in the module during sound check and that was that. Easiest sound check I've ever had with sound guys out front.
I used my usual 8 kits that I imported (except that I replaced my usual snare with one of the expanded snares) and for one song I used an entirely expanded kit that I had put together a few days before the show. The crowd and sound guys just loved the drums, but not as much as I did.
One comment from the sound guys after the show was that they thought the toms were just a little "middy", but not enough to bother tweaking and everything else was perfect.
I think this has been posted before, but there is something about this upgrade that has made my kit play so much better (even the imported kits play better). I can't quite define what it is, but the snare, HH, Bass, cyms - everything just responds with more finesse. Also, pad settings like cross-talk is much improved.
I think this upgrade was worth the $400 I paid for it (sweetwater - those guys rock!).

[Steve Gardner]

Rythymstik- thats a good post. part of the reason my drums are packed up and shelved is because of the snare hot spot....Did this address that in your opinion? I have heard a couple people say that it seems to, but I wantedc your thoughts....

[Rythmstik]

I'd have to say that I think it does, to a measurable extent. My snare now has, to me, an obviously less bothersome hotspot, without tweaking my pad settings. It seems to me now, that the hotspot is less pronounced, and more in line with what I'd expect from an asnare, when struck center head.

I have always disliked the hotspot, and despite having read every post about it and near contstant tweaking of the various settings, I've never been able to completely adjust it to my satisfaction. It certainly still exists with the TDW expansion in place, but without a doubt, it plays better - less obvious and less pronounced and I find it easier to finesse that area of the snare trigger, now.