Holy cow! What a beast this thing is. I made myself wait for a good while to get a sampling pad and I am grateful I did. Roland’s SPD-SX Pro does so many things that we would have killed for back in the late-80’s/early 90’s, being saddled with the original Octapad. Not that it wasn’t awesome at the time, but it was a galaxy away from what this delightful gizmo can accomplish.
If you were only going to do super-small club gigs, this thing would be all you need–granted you attached a kick and hi-hat pedal to it. That being said, it’s pretty obvious this device was designed to augment a traditional acoustic kit with electronic elements. I plan to augment a set of V-Drums, but It will be great to have alongside my DW’s if I am at gunpoint to be acoustic.
The ability to link and mute pads/triggers from other pads makes for a huge amount of flexibility in arrangements where performance is on the fly. Also being able to link the metronome to pads and retrigger the metronome ad hoc is amazeballs (if timing with a loop goes south, you can be back on track in a few beats).
There is a metric f-ton of stock sounds, but I mostly plan to use it to recreate the vibe of original recordings. Introducing custom sounds and samples is incredibly easy. The Roland SPD-SX Pro app is surprisingly effective and makes customizing kits (which you can arrange set lists with) a breeze.
More on this wonder as I get fluent with it…
