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21 of 22 found the following review helpful:
 Problems...Read before you buy!!! May 02, 2009
By David Miguel
"Proud USAF Member"
I ran into a few problems with the Ion Drum Rocker right out of the box.
First off, the sensitivity of the cymbals are about 65-75% of where they should be. If you're at an expert level, you'll definitely see the difference when you're hitting drum rolls on the high hat (middle of Everlong, YYZ, etc.). Second, you have to hit the cymbal a little harder than usual, which increases arm fatigue. Third, the cymbals are quite loud (not as loud as the RB1 drums, but damn near) in comparison to the tom toms. You can purchase aftermarket cymbals (several available for purchase online & amazon.com!) that would work extremely better.
The bass pedal is also an issue. Sturdy, but it is prone to sticking at the bottom. The pedal is also prone to static issues which cause the entire drum set to disconnect (http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107816).
Also, my drum module was triggering buttons sporatically (due to a manufacturer defect), but a replacement from amazon.com is on the way to my home.
In conclusion, the Ion Drum Rocker could've been a great drum set, but there were a few quirks that keeps it from greatness. You can get replacements for your cymbals($40-50 a piece) and also the Rock Pedal(great buy for your aspiring fake drum career :D); but it retrospect, you shouldn't have to spend money to upgrade equipment after just spending [...] bucks. Do your research!!!
21 of 23 found the following review helpful:
 How much fun is this thing?? Dec 12, 2008
By M. Winter
I ordered these on December 9th (in the evening) and thanks to a free trial of Amazon Prime, I got it shipped next day for just $3.99. Anyway I received them today and......WOW!!!! This peripheral single-handedly has made Rock Band FUN again!!! It's a completely different experience than the standard drum kit. The symbols add a level of realism that could not come close to being achieved with the standard kit. There is a learning curve, as the symbols will confuse you at times (when to hit them vs when to use the regular pads,) but it's fun figuring it out! The kick pedal is very good (way better than the one that comes with Rock Band and Rock Band 2, but not as good as the Omega Pedal.) It does take a while, took me about 30 minutes, to set up out of the box. There are wires going everywhere, one from each drum pad/symbol, to a central hub but you can zip-tie the cords up so it doesn't look like a rats nest. The kit can be set up to your liking as all the drum pads and the symbols are move-able. The pads themselves are more quiet and give more "bounce" than the rock band kit as well. Over all this is a very good drum kit, I have been playing Rock Band for almost 1 year, got to the point where I could play about 1/2 of the 250+ songs on expert so I have put a lot of time in on the old kit. I love the Drum Rocker and am looking forward to hours and hours of fun using it!!! The BEST kit on the market for playing Rock Band/Guitar Hero World Tour!
20 of 22 found the following review helpful:
Fantastic! Dec 13, 2008
By piq
In a nutshell, this is a fantastic electronic drum kit for Rock Band. It's worth picking up if you have skill and the drums and want to advance to the next level.
Some notes before starting out:
- When I compare the Ion Drum Rocker to the standard Rock Band kit, I am referring to the original R.B. drum kit, not the R.B.2 kit
- I have the Rock Pedal (which works for this kit with a simple 1/8 to 1/4 adapter) and will not discuss the pedal that comes with this kit (though it seems more responsive than the standard pedal)
- I have been a "Rock Band drummer" for about 10 months, and can play roughly 75% of the songs on Expert
Let me explain some specifics about this kit via a pros/cons list:
PROS
1) Drum pad placement. Lots of flexibility to move drums pads around--change the angle, height, and placement on the bar. You can set the four pads to wherever is most comfortable for you. The L-shaped rod under each pad gives you some flexibility in height.
2) Noise reduction. The drum pads are much quieter than the standard Rock Band kit. (There are some YouTube videos that demonstrate this, and it is a noticeable difference.)
3) Sensitive pads. The drum pads are velocity sensitive and also have more 'bounce' to them than the standard kit.
4) Easy adjustments. The kit comes with a drum key (an allen wrench, really) that lets you make every adjustment that needs to be made.
5) Cymbals. Come on, you really want this to have the cymbals, right? :> The cymbals are also quiet and really add to your enjoyment when playing. It also makes you focus more closely on what's going on in the music (not just blinding hitting the blue pad without noticing whether you're hitting a tom or a ride cymbal).
CONS
1) Cymbal placement. Well, it's okay, but you're a bit more limited when it comes to placement and angle. The kit comes with a short (~12") bar and a longer (~24"-30") bar, so you have some flexibility in height. The drums give you more freedom of placement.
2) Ships with two cymbals. You can order the third for $50, though.
3) No option for a fourth, or "red" cymbal. Some songs ("Run to the Hills" or "Rio" amongst others) have you hit the red pad as a cymbal, but there's no option to plug a cymbal into a "red" input. Not a huge problem, just a tad annoying (I'm actually more annoyed at the RB programmers for ever turning the red snare drum into a cymbal!).
4) Bigger/Bulkier than the original RB kit. Or maybe this is a con. :> It's not too much bigger, but it is heavier and a little trickier to move.
As a sidenote, I have not had any problems with the cymbals dropping 'fast' notes (mine are set to Ride/Blue and Crash/Green currently, so I haven't tried the Hi-Hat/Yellow).
Overall, the pros vastly outweigh the cons. These seem to be very high-quality drums, and it adds to the challenge of drumming when you have to differentiate between cymbals and toms when you're playing! If you are really into Rock Band drumming, I highly recommend this kit.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Great quality fun drums, more info for techies Mar 26, 2010
By Stosh
"Stosh"
This review may get too detailed for the average user, but if you're like me, you want to know everything there is to know.
The first thing I need to mention is that the static issue is a serious problem. While playing on carpet, eventually static builds up and causes the Ion's module to disconnect with PS3 halting your fun mid-song. This can happen several times each song. Check the internet - there are some solutions to isolate the pedal and stand by using fabric softener sheets lol! Luckily I accidentally stumbled upon the BEST way to fix this problem. Take an extra 1/4" patch cord, plug one end into the Ion module and let the other end dangle on the carpet. This will ground the module and there will be no way for any static to build up and discharge. Once I discovered this trick, I never lost connection again.
For a Rock Band replacement drum set, this set is AWESOME. If you're already good at RB, these will make you even better. If you don't get 100% accuracy at the end of a song, it's NOT the drums' fault, is YOUR fault. The responsiveness of the drum pads is pure heaven. They bounce back and make drum rolls a breeze. They are nice and quiet for small home or apartment use. The stand is very sturdy and excellent quality. Everything is easily adjustable to put the pads where you like. It's true what others wrote about portability. Tear-down and set up is not easy. Luckily I have space in my house and everything stays together and simply moved to the corner.
Bass pedal - very mediocre. I started with Guitar Hero and quickly upgraded to a much higher quality kicker and loved it, so I don't like the pedal style at all. It is playable, but you may want to upgrade. If you do, be careful because although the Ions advertise that you'll be ready to move up to professional electronic drumming at any time because their drums are just like real electronic drums - that's not entirely true. Although their pads are like real e-drums, the bass pedal is not. Ion's bass pedal is digital - in other words on or off. And that's the signal the Ion's drum module is expecting. If you upgrade to a real bass drum kicker, it puts out an analog signal basically identical to the rest of the pads in this kit. But the Ion module cannot read an analog signal for this input. You'll need to buy a small device that converts the signal.
Cymbals - here I can't give as good of a review. The cymbals sound like you're hitting a block of wood and the responsiveness isn't great. They're only moderately fun to play on and they're too loud, but that's not the real let down. I'm a Guitar Hero player 1st, and a Rock Band player 2nd, so if you like to play both, read on. I closely checked all the compatibility charts for GH and RB games, and every recent game supported Ion's drums. I mistakenly thought that the Ion drums would act just like the Guitar Hero World Tour drums (or Band Hero drums). They don't. The GH games will "dumb down" to only 4 lanes of drums just like you were playing RB. This was a huge disappointment to me because I like the added difficulty and realism of playing 5 drums plus a bass pedal as opposed to RB's 4 drums plus bass. The Ion drum module (the "brain") appears to have 8 inputs (1 bass pedal and 7 "drum" inputs). This is NOT the case for GH games. The module really only has 5 inputs: 1 bass pedal and 4 drums. The other 3 inputs are merely duplicates of 3 of the existing drums. They are simply wired in parallel so that a drum (or cymbal) hooked to either input produces exactly the same result. Conversely, in RB2 the cymbals do make a different sound during fills and in freestyle mode. A good thing is that in RB3, the Ions support the pro mode which means the cymbals are differentiated from the pads and you have to play the correct one. If you want to play on more realistic feeling cymbals, I recommend buying Ion's basic drum package and adding other cymbals that are more playable. Either way, there is no way to make GH work with 5 lanes unless you want to buy some extra and/or modded equipment. If you do, read on.
There are ways to play Guitar Hero games with 5 lanes as it was meant to be played, but you have to use extra equipment. There are forums out there to give all the details, but I'll sum it up quickly. You can use a real drum module from a set of real electronic drums by completely bypassing Ion's module. You plug the drums directly into the real drum module, then use the MIDI out from the drum module to the MIDI in on your Guitar Hero drums. If you've thrown out your GH drums, you can buy just the modules (and/or the wireless dongles) on internet auction sites. Do your homework before actually buying a real drum module because the module will need to have reprogrammable MIDI channels so that the GH module gets the correct signal. If the MIDI notes cannot be reprogrammed, you'll need yet another piece of hardware that is made strictly to re-map MIDI notes.
The second way is to just get the MIDI box that accepts drum pad signals, and outputs (re-programmable) MIDI signals. These boxes are much cheaper than true drum modules because they aren't capable of outputting any sounds, only MIDI signals.
The third way is to buy a modded Guitar Hero drum module or mod one yourself. You can make the stock GH drum module accept input from the Ion's drum pads by putting 1/4" female jacks on the GH module and connecting them internally. Check forums for how to do this correctly.
Be warned that if you do use the Ion's to play GH, you CAN'T use Ion's bass pedal because it's digital. You'll have to use GH's stock pedal or some upgrade that's like a real kicker with an analog signal. Also be warned that Ion's drum pads output a VERY strong analog signal and can be too sensitive when used with a modded GH module. You can download a program to adjust the sensitivity of the GH module, but I've found that even at the absolute lowest setting, the pads are still too sensitive and you get false hits from vibrations from other pads. This can be fixed by attenuating each of the signals by using resistors, but that's even more modding!
The final part of this review is to talk about the most fun part to me. You can get rid of Ion's drum module and connect your Ion drums into a real electronic drum module and play along with either GH or RB. This can be done in practice mode, but if you want a real thrill, you can make it work inside a real game too. If you can program your drum module to re-map the MIDI notes, you can take the drum module's MIDI output and put it into Guitar Hero's MIDI input. Now your drums will register inside the game. You can then turn the volume down on the video game's drum track and then turn the volume up on your drums' amp or however you play your real electronic drums. Warning!!! This will make you realize how difficult it really is to drum. The video games have a (relatively) HUGE margin of error where you can strike a drum too early or too late and the music still plays perfectly. With this setup now the drums play exactly when you hit them. This is an extremely fun time. Even better is that you can keep adding more drums (like more cymbals and more toms) and map different drums to same colors making your drums still register in the game. It becomes much more like real drums.
If you're like me and spend too much on this type of video game, I have another suggestion for you. If you think you'll keep upgrading drums or adding lots of stuff, you'll be way ahead of the game if you just start with a real set of electronic drums. You can get basic kits for $500-$1000. I know it sounds like a lot, but trust me - if you start with Ion's drums and keep upgrading and adding stuff you'll end up spending much more in the long run. Just realize that you're spending this money on a stand and 4 pads. The Ion module will become useless and the so will the cymbals when you upgrade. If you're going to stay with Rock Band and not go to real e-drums, this kit is awesome, but like I said before, skip the cymbals.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Believe it: Static issues are real Apr 28, 2010
By Ethan S. Tabor
This drum set is great when it works (and when adding the additional cymbal - I'll get to that). I will be focusing my review on the problems I've had with the quality of the set and the difficulty in working with the Ion product support.
Guitar Hero Incompatibility
I bought this set to use with Guitar Hero World Tour, after lightly researching that it was compatible. I guess I needed to do more research. In Guitar Hero World Tour the game would not switch to 4 lanes (which in my opinion completely contradicts the purpose of having the cymbals) like it's supposed to, only the red and yellow cymbal/pads are mapped and there is no patch program to download off PSN. So, out of the box this set is incompatible with GHWT.
After researching more, you can purchase a MIDI drum module (such as the Alesis DM5) and run it through the GHWT drum set. But even then, supposedly, there's an issue with the Ion pedal so you'll need to purchase another pedal. So, no go on GHWT.
I purchased Rock Band 2. Great game, but 1 less lane and the difficulty isn't as good. I won't go into the specifics. I prefer GHWT, I just feel it has a better drumming experience.
Incomplete (No 3rd cymbal)
After playing on RB2, my friends and I got really confused as to when to hit the blue pad vs. blue cymbal and likewise with green pad vs. green cymbal. This premium set only includes one cymbal for either green or blue, and it is highly confusing. It is an absolute must to purchase the additional cymbal so you have 1:1 mapping between green and blue cymbals and pads. In my opinion, this set is incomplete without it and it feels Ion didn't include it to get the cost down. It's like playing a Dual Shock controller without one of the analogue sticks where you can 'map' one of the sticks to one of the... well.. you get it.
Static Disconnects
Ion replaces parts within 90 days of purchase, and it takes 4-6 weeks to receive replacements. When my drum set experienced disconnects on day 1, I spoke with tech support who said that the set is prone to disconnect from static electricity that builds up when the set is placed on carpet. Nowhere did I read in the product description, the manual or their website noting this. Further, they explained that it is highly likely that if the disconnects continue to happen it will damage the unit, if it isn't DAMAGED ALREADY. I immediately purchased interlocking mattes from costco and placed the drumset on it, solving the disconnect issue.
After under a week of playing an hour a day, the drums started disconnecting again during every song, and finally the pedal stopped responding (but the other cymbals and pads work fine). Ion will be replacing the pedal (which will take 4-6 weeks to receive). I asked if they would replace the module and they said that the pedal is probably the issue due to either disconnects or physical damage due to playing the pedal too hard. I hope my pedal didn't break with under 12 hours of use...
I recommend this product if you:
1. Do your research
2. Understand you will be spending more money to get this set to work as intended
3. Don't have GHWT
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Update July 22, 2010
It's been almost 3 months since I sent the pedal and module back for repair. I received the pedal 1 month after sending it, and still haven't received the module. 2 weeks ago I called and was promised a call back, but I haven't gotten one. Right now I have been on hold for an hour waiting to speak with someone in tech support. I expect to be transferred and put on further hold, as what happened last time.
I have changed the rating of this review from 2 to 1 stars. Over the course of purchasing 4 months ago I have had 5 days of use from it. The rest of the time I have been waiting for the product, stuck on hold with their tech support, or dealing with the unit disconnecting.
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