I've had my Roland TD12 vDrums kit for over a decade and love it, but I've always used it for home practice and teaching. Having bought a new one for live gigs in November 2023, I played my first ever gig with it the next weekend with Rekovered and I have to say, it's a game changer!

The kit sounded fantastic out front once we tweaked a few settings, I could hear everything with full clarity (perhaps not an advantage when you can hear all your mistakes!!), at no point did it feel noticeably different to play than my acoustic kits and the overall volume was far easier to manage.*

Now, don't get me wrong, I'd absolutely prefer to play acoustic kit live. But unless you mic it up properly, you don't get the same sound out front that you think you are producing, you certainly don't get the same sound in your in-ears and you always end up forcing it to compete with the more enthusiastic playing from everyone as the night goes on.

Does it look as impressive as a full acoustic rig? Nope. But apart from drummers I don't think anyone cares, and my god it's lighter to cart about.

If you are playing theatres and you're micing up, acoustic is still the best. But for pub and club gigs, this is the future.

Best get on board!

*Ok, full disclosure. After a few gigs, I did find a few issues, primarily with the rack and the kick trigger.

The lightweight and compact rack it comes with would be fine for home use and if you want a very standard setup. However, I prefer my high toms to be further to the left than is possible with the cymbal arms extending from the two uprights, and it forces the ride too far to the right for my liking. Cable management is also an issue, with jack/usb leads running everywhere along the horizontal pipes. I replaced it with a used MDS-20 rack, the same one that came with my TD-12. It needed a bit of work to trim a few inches off the right front upright to stop it fouling the ride, but it's far more sturdy and most of the leads run through the pipes. 

The KD-10 kick trigger was a much bigger issue. No matter what I tried, (including getting a custom wedge made to help my DW9000 double pedal clamp properly), it just would not stay in place and I was constantly repositioning it during gigs. I replaced it with a used KD-85 (again like on my TD12) and with a couple of L-arm clamps on the bottom bar it's rock solid. 

Oh, and like everyone else, I hate the D25 cable snake on the module, but that's pretty much unavoidable on kits under about £5K these days.