Alesis Surge First Impressions

Here are the sizes: You get a 10” snare, three 8” toms and a 8” kick. Except for the kick all those drums are dual zone. For the cymbals, they are all 10 inches across. They are single zone but you can get a bell sound by hitting the ride really hard. You get a 4 post chrome drum rack, it comes with the kick pedal, drum key, and drum sticks so you save at least $50 there. I’ve played a lot of $500 electronic drum sets, but there aren’t many that have a 10” mesh snare. It’s a very fun kit to play. The Module has 385 sounds and 40 kits. For ports, it has USB Midi, Midi IN and OUT ports, 2 extra inputs for more cymbals or toms, Right and Left quarter inch outputs, and a aux in port for connect your phone or a laptop so you can play along to songs, headphone port. As an overall package, this thing has the largest pads for any drumset like it for the $500 price range. It’s biggest weakness might be the sounds though. They are pretty bad, and the hihat just has closed, open, and half open sounds. You’ll want to upgrade the module as fast as possible honestly or use it with drum software. On the plus side it does have the best port selection for it’s range on the back of it, so it’s very flexible. I like the fact that it has the kick tower, that’s not always a given for the $500 price range. I personally would never pay a drumset that doesn’t have a kick tower, that’s really the only reason I don’t like the Roland TD1k actually. That drumset is the same price, and easily sounds twice as good, but it doesn’t have the kick tower, and it doesn’t have a single port on the back, other than headphones, usb, and mix in. That means you have to connect your drumset to a mixer if you want to record yourself because it doesn’t have dedicated outputs. The main competition for this drumset is probably the Yamaha DTX430k. If you have $500 those are the two drum sets you should choose between. The Yamaha set has better build quality, and will probably last a bit longer, I also prefer the sounds, it has better coaching features, and it even has a dedicated app. You can control the set just from your iPhone. But it’s pads are just hard rubber pads, and the snare isn’t as large as the Alesis kit. This makes the Alesis kit a bit more fun to play. So basically this set is the largest drumset you can buy for $500, that’s basically Alesis’s MO. It's really fun to play, but probably won’t hold up to 5 years of play. If you know that going in, this set might be the one for you. Link To Purchase The Alesis Surge Drumset https://amzn.to/30hjMup ***This link helps support the channel by earning the channel a small commission at no cost to you