Great googly moogly, the ION drum kit is freaking awesome!
Wow. I mean seriously, wow. I was hoping it would be a big improvement over the RB1 kit, but I was caught off guard by how truly "professional" it seems. I was expecting an excellent video-game controller, but a pretty ghetto drum kit. What I got seems better than the other "cheap but real" kits I've played with. I'd never seen the Simmons style kits in real life. I'm surprised how nice they are. Much better than, say, a cheap Yamaha kit. (This is after about 4 hours of use. Mostly setup and watching my wife play. Maybe it'll start sucking tonight, but I doubt it.)
A little background: I played in a band when I was younger. Bass. Cover band. Just for fun. Most of my friends are guitar players, and are much better than I am, or ever was. I went to school as a recording engineer, but didn't pursue that line of work. I did work as a sound man and roadie for a Motown/R&B band for several years. My wife used to work for Paul Revere and the Raiders, and she played a bit of drums back in her school days. (We're old.) We've owned a "real" electronic drum kit for a couple years. (Pintech and Roland gear, mostly.) We mostly use it when friends are over for a jam session. Neither one of us are very good drummers, especially me! We bought RB1 when it came out. I did the gum-rubber and PVC cross-bracing mods to the RB kit. I have a 360.
Okay, enough with my so-called qualifications. This ION kit is, IMO, very well put together. It's probably even more solid feeling than my "real" kit. Part of that is because it's smaller, but it's quite beefy nonetheless. Strong like tractor! When played, nothing moves, nothing vibrates. Well, the cymbals move a bit, but they are supposed to. The clamps aren't "plastic". They appear to be nylon or something, and all the threaded bits are metal. Again, very beefy. The tubes that make up the frame have little grooves running down them, to improve clamping action, and this appears to work very well.
The drum pads are super quiet. Almost freakishly quiet. Quieter than my mesh-headed pads upstairs, even. And I usually hate rubber-type pads. These seem... really nice. I'm not sure about the bounce, because my wife hogged the kit all evening.
The cymbals are a bit noisier than the pads, but even they are probably a bit quieter than my gum rubber modded RB1 kit. While standing next to the kit, playing a song on bass, I don't notice any kit sounds at all. Lovely. If I sit on the floor next to the kit, then the cymbals are louder. 'Cause I'm hearing them from the bottom. Still not bad though. More of a thunk than a thwack.
The control unit "brain" seems fine. The d-pad works great. We mounted it under the yellow/blue pads, as recommended. It's totally protected down there, but you have to operate it "blind" for the most part. Not a problem when playing "normally", but it can be a little annoying when you're doing stuff like adjusting the speed in training mode, or dressing up your character... I think once we get used to things, and stop missing the pads, we'll remount the brain up above the pads.
The kick pedal is slightly sketchy. When I tried it out in my hands, it was kinda squeaky/scrapey/clanky. Happily, once you set it on the carpet, it seems to quiet way down. It's certainly bigger and sturdier than the regular RB pedals, but it's not world beating or anything.
The pads can be played very gently, and they pick up hits very well. The cymbals must be hit more firmly. Not "hard", but firmly. I don't see that as a problem, just something that you may need to adjust to.
So, is the ION kit perfect? Sadly, no. But the one semi-glaring flaw I've encountered could be fixed in software. Will it? I dunno. Harmonix hasn't seemed too interested thus far. Here's the issue:
There are three cymbal inputs on the brain. Yellow, blue, and green. (No red.) This works fine for right-handed players, since red is usually mapped to the snare. But, my wife is left-handed. In lefty mode, the crash (and low tom) is on red. There is no way to connect a "red" crash cymbal to the ION brain. I believe the RB2 kit is the same way: No red jack on the back.
So, that's kinda sucky. We mounted the red pad up slightly high, out to the left. It works okay for those occasional crashes. You can't mount it up super high however, because that pad is the low tom occasionally, and you need to be able to do tom fills smoothly.
Since this issue affects the stock RB2 kit as well, I hope H will fix it in a patch. All they need to do is add an option that maps the green cymbal input to "red" when in lefty mode. Problem solved. (They also need to fix those few charts that inexplicably swap the snare and hat colors, but we've already beaten that horse to death.)
My score after one day of living with the ION kit: 9.5. Even as a left hander. It's really that impressive.
On to the new RB2 guitar. It's also awesome. The fret buttons are something like a third as noisy as before. The auto-calibration hardware worked flawlessly for me. The back of the neck is now slightly textured, so no more slimy thumb syndrome. The overdrive trigger actually works. The D-pad seems a little worse than the ones on earlier model guitars. I also currently own a Byte-Arts modded wired guitar, and a 1st-gen wireless (360) guitar. The strummer on the RB2 guitar crushes both of those. It almost feels like I'm cheating. I know this is a subjective thing however. I like the quiet strummer, especially now that they've removed the mushy, where's-the-limit feel. Clicky-fans will likely still bitch. My score: 9.
And finally, the RB2 game itself. Seems good. Nothing too remarkable, but I've barely scratched the surface. Seems very Rock Band-ish.
