The Simmons Titan 70 is currently one of the more capable drum kits that Simmons has on the market, and it has it’s share of positive and negative things about it. After playing one for a while I have a few things I both like and don’t like about it. I’ll cover the positives first.
#1 – The Fully Assembled Rack
This was the first thing that impressed me about the Titan 70 kit, mostly because it was the first thing I encountered when unboxing and putting the kit together. The fully assembled rack saves some good time when trying to get the kit set up for the first time. After taking almost an hour a couple weeks ago to fully unpack and assemble a rack for a Roland kit, It really made me appreciate how the Titan racks from Simmons are already assembled out of the box.
#2 – The Triple Zone Ride Cymbal
Not very many $800 or less kits offer a triple zone ride cymbal, you usually have to spend over $1000 to get that. That was another thing I really liked about the Titan 70. Having separate edge, bow and bell zones was a nice upgrade after playing the Titan 50 for a while, which only had a single zone ride cymbal pad. The ride cymbal responded pretty well too, which thought was great since I didn’t have high expectations considering the price point. It certainly makes the Titan 70 kit feel like it’s punching above it’s weight.
#3 – The Larger Kick Tower Pad
The kick tower pad has a nice amount of surface area and it responds well with a double bass pedal. This is another nice advantage of the Titan 70 considering it’s price point. I was able to easily use my Tama Iron Cobra double pedal, and the larger surface area of the kick pad gave me some flexibility in adjusting the height of my beaters. I had a Titan 50 before the Titan 70, and that was one of my issues with the Titan 50 kick tower – the pad was wide enough for a double pedal but it didn’t offer much flexibility for adjusting beater heights. So I really appreciated that extra surface area both horizontally and vertically when I started playing the Titan 70.
#4 – The Simmons App
This was something that I grew to appreciate only after starting to use it. When I first was playing the Titan 70 I was just using the module on it’s own. That works fine, but it didn’t really encourage me to edit kits or play with the module settings as much. After I tried using the Simmons App along with the module I realized how it makes editing the kits much more of an easy, visual process and it encouraged me to play with the kit sounds and effects more. It was really easy to see where current settings were at and to make adjustments when using the app, more so than via the module interface. If you’re skeptical about the app I’d suggest to at least give it a try, it won me over pretty quickly.
#5 – Simmons Customer Support
This isn’t so much about the kit itself but more about the company behind the kit. I ran into some triggering problems with one of the pads after first setting up the kit and I was able to get replacement parts very quickly from Simmons. They didn’t hesitate to send me a new cymbal pad and even some extra rack brackets that I requested, which was awesome. I have had some other support experiences with other companies that weren’t so great, so it was refreshing to find that there was active and helpful support when I needed it from Simmons.
There’s more positives I could add, but these are the top five that stood out to me after using the kit for a while. For more about the Titan 70 check out our in depth, hands on review where we cover the details of the kit as well as some more things we did and didn’t like about it.
