The MOST EXPENSIVE Electronic Drum Set I’ve Played - $9,000 DWe

It's been a minute since we expanded on the DW story. It started with us reviewing a DW Collector's Maple Kit and then reviewing a DW Design Series Acrylic, then I went on a little side quest and talked to some of the DW folks in person, but now we have the latest and greatest In

electronic

drum

technology, the DWE, which is essentially a wireless

electronic

drum

set and acoustic kit form factor. Now when I opened the collector's Maple Bryce, he was with us and we had a little B-side in the shape of a symbol and he somehow nailed it perfectly, which I still don't understand how he did it, but unfortunately it can't be here today, He's busy with a Christmas production but he came by yesterday to borrow a bunch of drums so we have a little bet on the wrapper or the finish of this kit because I have no idea what color this kit is what wrapper what finish this kit has , they just sent it to me. locked in was Silver Sparkle mainly because 65 drums had a dwe kit and his was Silver Sparkle so he could be cheating tobacco with Black fade.

I've seen a couple of photos of them. I haven't done any research on it, but yeah, do you want to? to know my guesses, what is your guess? Look at that drum there and this kit right here and your kit in the church, yeah, it's going to be, what do they call the pale blue oyster? No, I don't think so, but look how it ends like this. It would be so funny, I'll let you clean that up anyway, thanks for the battery, if I didn't mention that dinner is on the line, like last time, more boxes, ooh, it's got some weight behind it, oh, we're both wrong , so I have some acoustic heads, but the drum has mesh heads or yeah, just the hitter side, look at that thing there, so that was the 10, this is probably the 12 12 by9 from the looks of it, some things good things we will get. for later FL Tom legs the floor tom, you know, I didn't think to check if they included the tamber note on the inside of these.

No, they didn't, but the shell is made of Hard Rock Maple with the green 333 orientation for optimal acoustics. Integrated wireless triggering performance and technology allows for unlimited electronic versatility. Oh, that was the end of the sentence. I think this is a 20, maybe not. I think it's actually a 22. It even comes with the acoustic pillow. Look at this head, it's crazy now with this box. I think it has all the special products inside, oh the symbols, I don't know what I was thinking, look at this, that's crazy, yeah, it sounds like nothing, we have two 16s, is there a third?

No no, this is an 18. so that must mean these are the tall heads, I'm not entirely sure how this works, if I had to guess that's the bottom, these are pretty fancy looking symbols, they're Made of some type of metal, there is a separate bell that is insulated from this small pad. rubber, so if we turn it around, this is all plastic and probably covers all the things that make the magic happen and the only real difference with the top hat is that the stand is different. I assume this is for some type of clutch. There is also a little tab at the bottom which I assume is for opening or closing and now we can finally dive into these two little boxes, we have all the wing nut symbols as well as the top hat tote bag and whatnot. be. looks like a headphone amp, the wireless receiver, some USB adapters, the USBC cable looks like midi to 8 inches and another USBC.

Now we have this box, this looks familiar, look at that sticker and really the only thing in there was a bunch of spare attention wands. of drum keys and this little bass drum hoop protector, now you're probably wondering where the snare comes from. I assumed it was in those other boxes, but it's on its way, that's all that matters, so while we wait, let's take a closer look at these. shells, it has a 10x8 and 12 by 9 floor time, a 16 by 14 floor time and a 22x 16 inch base and this wrap is White Marine Pearl, take a quick look at the badge, nothing too crazy, nice and simple, they also embellished this logo with that little border, it's usually just solid like this, it has mega fine thread tension rods, no it doesn't and now I'm not the

most

modern when it comes to everything DW, but I'm pretty sure that this hardware is similar to what you'll find on a performance series, so here's a collector series, the dwe and then the design, so you can see the large lugs on the collectors, the medium lugs on the E and then the small lugs on the acrylic just as a comparison to the mass we have.

It is enlightenment. top is supposed to do that it has mesh heads which are legit mesh heads Roland was the first to design and patent mesh heads the mesh head on the bottom is a little crazier the weaving and stitching is more so Of course I guess that's the right word if I had to guess that a regular mesh head was too flexible so they had to reinforce it a little and then all the reso heads are just regular old drum heads and I'm sure they If you would like the kit to be a little quieter, you can swap out the reso heads with mesh heads.

Now let's do a quick weight comparison because the E has all the goodness inside its 7lb collectible maple and we'll round it up to 5oz and now the e weighs 8lb and we'll say 4oz so the E is definitely heavier now again and this is a solo kit so a few people have had this before me but I'm going to be that guy and fix one little thing. You can even mute the battery by hand. I had no idea. I did it on instinct and the box finally decided to join the club. It is a 14x 62 lugger carp.

The side of the snare has a mesh head unlike the other drums. a Remo head compared to a Roland head, it comes with analog drum heads if you want to go acoustic as well as snare cables, and it's a little hard to see, but there are snare drums cut into the shell, it has a position 3D The buttplate for when you go acoustic also has a MAG release and look at that little button, it even works in E mode. At this point you've probably realized that there are multiple play zones on the drum kit and that you can do a lot of The sounds you can make on an acoustic kit with this kit and one of those sounds is a crossed stick and the way it works is the head feels the pressure of your hand on the head so I think we can cheat a little bit This is the only problem.

Look how I play with crossed clubs

most

of the time my hand comes off the head with the club, maybe it's just bad technique but to me that feels natural so having to keep pressure on the palm while lifting the steak is very uh not natural for me now a quick price breakdown everyone was saying in the comments above that they are tired of seeing the little eits from $3 to $400 so this setup currently It costs $8,999 before taxes, making it the most

expensive

battery. I've had it in the studio and as a side note, you can get the exact same setup but with a curly maple burst finish for an extra two grand, but the 9k price gets you everything I showed in the video so far, plus you get a download of the software you need for this kit and it also comes with a 5,000 series hardware package so you get all the brackets, mounts and pedals, and one nice thing about the hardware package is that you get lots of extra drum keys. key on the pedal another extra key with the snare holder another extra key on the regular boom holder another extra key with a top hat holder and a holder for it and another sticker I'm not going to lie I might steal this one this is my First time for real using DW hardware it's a little bulkier than I'm used to, but so far it feels pretty solid.

What about battery hardware engineering degree? Let's tune this with one of the 12 drum keys we have. This is also convenient. a short rod and a long rod will match the long one, we definitely won't try to overcompensate for anything, now setting up the kit is pretty simple and like any other kit, but the symbols are a little different, they use these rubber felts. with this different style wing nut and then the top hat holder comes with two different bottom tubes, one for a regular top hat and then a different one for the E, so the bottom symbol continues and then this piece is screw it in to lock it and for the top symbol there is a special clutch that just slides into place and then these two nuts lock it in place.

I feel like the symbols are the weakest link in this kit, not in the sense that they are going to break or fall apart but they just feel very unnatural they are very heavy they have like zero Flex or give and I'm sure all of you have hit The Wing N Up by accident before while playing that is what these symbols feel it is a very unsettling feeling and not great it sounds really

expensive

because it is very expensive but if we look at just the drums with all the electronics inside them they cost only about $1,000 more than a collector's maple in the same sizes, so yes, you could argue that you're getting an electronic kit and an acoustic kit for about the same price as a comparable acoustic kit, but you need these symbols for the electronic element because they are wireless and cost like another $2,000 eh, friend, you also have to factor in the price of the acoustic symbols, I didn't think about that, aren't you going to lie?

I don't even know how to compare the price of this kit to other kits because this is the only one out there that has the features and functions that it has so yeah and plus you will need a computer to run the software or you can also plug the receiver into certain stand-alone modules and you won't need a computer, so you'll have to keep the price in mind either way. of a computer or a module if you don't already have one and if it wasn't clear before, this is nothing like the cheaper eits I've had on the channel before and is not something I would recommend to someone just starting out.

This kit is a significant investment, but speaking of the software, setting up the kit is really simple: all you have to do is connect the receiver and interface, pair the drums, and do some calibrations by hitting them. I also needed to update the firmware on the pads, which took no time at all, so by no means was the initial setup a huge headache, it was much easier than I expected. Learning new software and setting up new software always gives me a lot of anxiety and now a little side note with the interface out there. USBC for the computer, obviously, an e-inch input for playing music.

I'm guessing a headphone output and then a left and right stereo output, meaning if you're using this interface in a live environment you only have a left and right output to output. at the front of the house so that was the dwe control software, there is the dw sound work software which can be used standalone or as a virtual instrument for recording and this is where you control all the sounds you can select your kit , you can design your own kits and change things however you like, well, let's take a look at this natural mahogany maple.

We also have the mahogany maple studio, so basically the same kit because it's the same kit, just a different level of vibe. I guess we're going to try the 50th anniversary natural, now the kick drum is a little quiet on this kit, so if we go here we can turn it up a little bit, pure natural almond. I like that box, it has a Gretch kit, try slingerland, there's a Sizzle on the ride, let's try this. spacious Spruce very padded times, okay, I really like the natural pure almond or was it metal, do we make metal?

Let's try metal so the kit wasn't fully charged so I don't know if you heard that weirdness in the kick but I think that's why so make sure the kit is charged before you play it let's customize this kit so we can go to the rack time, let's adjust it a little bit the same with that fls on, you know it might be too low, okay, kick. uh let's mention that, get more click, a little more attack, that you can also EQ everything, you can add a compressor, a saturator, reverb, uh, a bunch of other things, you can also change the ambience, the amount of overhead microphones on that. straight sound, uh, snare, I actually really like the snare that's tuned all the way down, we're almost going to turn it up, yeah, more, so that was just tuning the drums.

If we go with the kit designer, you can also change the battery, so this is the pamin, obviously. but come on, ooh, real traps, we definitely need the brass bell. Honestly, I don't like that trap, let's go back to the Almond, so now from here we can also change the symbols, so we have some custom duels of classic 14 inch mono, uh, what? otherwise we got some sabians some zilin uh let's try these sweet K 15 inch 19 let's try this ooh little dump. I like that pisty, gogood together and now in the second accident we need something like a China custom K hybrid 21 inch B and a Jazz China yeah.

Did you know? We're going to tune these hi-hats so they sound a little more like 16. Maybe there was a very cursory look at the software because there's so much more you can do with it and if you click here, there's a list of all the presets and you can To say that DW didn't skimp on these samples because there are a lot of different kits, boxes and symbols and they use a lot of different really expensive microphones, but now what about the acoustics inside? the trigger mechanism, so we have to remove it so there's one, two and three, and this may be unrelated, but here's a closer look at the mesh head, it has a plastic ring and this is actually a head two-ply, but since we're about to get rid of that head, now we need our acoustic head, then the rim can go back on, then we just repeat that process on all the other drums and for the symbols we just remove this wing nut and the felt, we remove the symbol that we placed on its normal felt. add the symbol and then the top felt and the wing nut, the top hat is a little more complicated so we remove the top symbol, we also get rid of this one and put this one which is made for a normal symbol and is also worth it Note that you only get one memory lock.

I didn't actually have it on the E version, it comes with a normal tote bag for a couple of normal top hats, so that's a good thing because you can leave the tote bag on the E symbol, although this wouldn't work for a normal symbol and that's the top hat holder, so it's actually not that difficult. Turning it into an acoustic kit alone takes a good amount of time but maybe that's why they include seven drum keys, just get six friends and give them a key and you'll be done in no time and then another little thing to take note of.

Once you return to e mode, you will have to calibrate everything again, which takes no time and in fact, every time you change the tuning of a drum, you have to recalibrate it. Oh, and so, we're back to e-mode, but In addition to everything I showed in this video, there are four main questions I had about this kit and spending some time with it really helped me answer those questions, except for one of them, which It's something you would see yourself playing and owning because yes. There is a link in the description where you can buy one, but now my real question is about latency.

I didn't have any problems with latency, which is still crazy to think that all this information is sent to this little box wirelessly and then to your computer and into your headphones with basically zero sound latency, the IF, the I was a little surprised because I didn't realize that the toms were two-ply heads and then the bass drum and snare were three-ply heads and then of course the bass drum has that thick, plain weave, so the bounce was much more natural than I expected. The only kind of weird feeling I had was when you play busier stuff around the drums and move around more, you can really feel how skilled the mesh heads are, it's a little hard to explain and show, but you definitely feel it, so Of course, the symbols didn't feel as good.

I will say the more I

played

them the more I got used to them, but I guarantee you as soon as I go back to the normal symbols these will feel like garbage, the tall hats I calibrated like four or five times but I still got some weird sounds when opening or closing them and I also noticed if I had my foot on the pedal for a while. a long time and then I would release it from time to time, that would also make a sound, mostly I would choke on the symbols which I had no problem with, but every once in a while I would go to choke it and it wouldn't choke, but if I move my hand like a qu inch would then be choked, so by no means is the kit perfect, but I have to say that for DW's first go at such an ambitious project, they did a pretty solid job and I think it's only a matter of time before this technology is perfected and it is also more affordable, so leave a comment with your opinion.

I have some videos on other kits as well as some videos on other DW kits if you want to check them out because right now I have to pack this up and ship it back to DW