Review: Alesis Command X Mesh Electronic Drum Kit

The Rack

This drum kit includes a nicer rack than the cheaper Alesis counterparts. This is where you start to get into chrome rack territory. The rack is solid, sturdy and it also looks sharp. The non-slip clamps for the rack are plastic and similar to the clamps used on the cheaper Alesis kits. They hold the pieces in place well, and can be tightened up enough to make the kit feel like one solid piece.

This isn’t an overly huge rack, it’s still pretty compact, but it will give you enough room to add another pad or two if you want to expand the kit.

Sturdiness

For it’s smaller footprint and budget minded approach, this is pretty sturdy kit. Many drummers feel like they need to play more lightly on electronic kits, but harder players who play this kit say they don’t feel like they need to hold back at all.

The pads stay in place when the clamps are firmly tightened throughout the stand and nothing is going to move out of place while you play. The rack and pads might shake a little when you play them harder, but overall the kit has a solid, sturdy feel.

Feel & Playability

Drummers who play this kit like the feel of the drum pads. The mesh heads on the snare and toms are great and have a natural feel compared to harder types of drum pads. The strike zone on the pads isn’t narrow either, so you can hit around various areas on the pad heads and get a good sound response.

The cymbal pads are a little debatable. Most drummers find the cymbal pads to feel just fine when playing, they feel ok and much like a hard rubber drum pad.

Most of the complaints about the cymbal pads are about the lack of true dual zone sounds on the cymbals. They are billed as “dual zone” pads on this kit, but in this case that seems to mean that they have a hit zone and choke zone. There is no bell zone or edge zone on the ride, for example, and you have to hit it harder to generate the bell sound like on some other budget kits.

The kick pad has a little more of an acoustic feel with it’s mesh design and it works well in the context of an electronic kit. It still feels more like playing a practice pad than a real kick drum, but it’s certainly very playable.

In terms of noise, the drum pads are pretty quiet when hitting the mesh heads, and the cymbal  pads have a sound like whacking on a practice pad. The kick pad has a little thump to it and it makes some noticeable noise.

The Command Drum Module

The namesake drum module for this particular kit is the Command Drum Module. This is a more capable drum module than the cheaper Alesis kits will have. Let’s go over some of the features.

Interface

The interface is actually quite simple and straightforward, with a minimal amount of buttons. Things are named intuitively enough that you won’t need to do a whole lot of guessing if you don’t read the manual before trying it out. Many of the functions are accessed via navigating into menus in the screen display.

Inputs, Outputs and Connections

On the right side of the unit, you will find:

• The power input for the power supply
• The USB port where you can load sounds via a USB stick or drive

On the rear you will find:

• 3.5mm Stereo Headphone output
• 3.5mm Aux Input for connecting an audio player to play along with
• Stereo 1/4″ TRS outputs
• MIDI In/Out
• USB MIDI Port
• Additional 1/4″ crash trigger input for adding another cymbal pad to the kit
• Additional 1/4″ tom trigger input for adding another tom pad to the kit

The thing that jumps out to me about this module is the addition of the USB port to load sounds. That is something you won’t find on most of the cheaper kits out there. The expansion ports for additional pads are also nice to have if you want to grow your kit. Everything else is pretty standard.

Scope of Sounds

The Command module contains 54 preset drum kits and 20 user kit slots for saving your own drum kits. There are a total of 671 sounds according to Alesis. The kit/sound list published by Alesis shows 50 preset drum kits and 643 sounds in the reference list.

Alesis Command Voice List (PDF)

Overall, there is a nice mix of kit styles and sounds. There’s kits for all types of music that you might want to play. And the ability to load your own sounds or make your own kits adds just that much more flexibility out of the box.

The sounds themselves are pretty good. These aren’t top-tier electronic drum sounds by any means, but they don’t suck either. You may find the sounds to be very workable for your needs. If you are very discerning about your drum sounds you may find the built in sounds to be lacking. No problem though, you are able to connect the module to a computer or other sound modules via MIDI to completely open up your sound options.

Editing Kits and Voices

The module allows you to edit kits and voices to tweak the sounds to your liking. You are able to choose different voices (the sounds) for each slot in the drum kits.

You can also further edit the voices and pad settings to modify the sounds to your liking. You are able to adjust settings such as: Pan, Volume, Pitch, Reverb and Decay.

You are also able to change the mode of each pad for playback. What this means is that you can choose from among Polyphonic (sounds overlap as you play them), Monophonic (Sounds silence each other when a new sound is played) and other settings like stopping all sounds or activating the metronome.

Metronome

This module contains a metronome, as most modules do. Always practice with a metronome!

Play Along Tracks

If you are looking for basic tracks to play along with, the Command module includes 60 practice tracks. You can play along with them or even record your performances along with them to help with practice.

Trigger Settings

This module offers ability to change the trigger settings for the pads. This is where you are able to dial in the “feel” of your kit, and change how sensitive the pads are.

You are able to change the following for most pads, even though not all these options are not available for all of the pads:

• Sensitivity – How the pads react to stronger or lighter playing
• Rim Sensitivity – How the rims react to stronger or lighter playing
• Head-Rim Adj – Adjust the amount of cross talk between the head and rims – if you are hitting the rim and triggering the head, this setting can help tweak that issue, for example.
• Threshold – The amount of force in general that needs to be applied to generate a sound
• Xtalk – Cross talk settings allow you to control how much pads react to the vibrations coming from other pads being hit and triggered.
• Curve – Adjust the velocity curves to control how dynamic the sounds are in reaction to lighter or harder playing
• Retrig Cancel – Adjust the amount of time to produce two sounds. If you are getting a lot of double triggers from single hits, this setting can help with that.

Overall, the ability to tweak all these parameters will give you the ability to dial in specific settings to help the kit feel more natural to your play style. It’s well worth it to take the time to explore these settings after you initially get your kit setup, especially if you are a more serious drummer and will be playing the kit a lot.

Lefty Mode

One other nice thing about this module is that you can put it in “Lefty” mode, which reverses the input of the pads on the modules, allow you to set thing up in reverse and still play it.

USB Drive and Loading Sounds

A standout feature for this module in it’s price range is the ability to load sounds from USB and save kits to USB drives.

The ability to load sounds is probably the most interesting to most people reading this. You can load individual samples to replace voices in the user kits. There are some limitations, as outlined in the manual:

• Each sample must be a 16-bit mono WAV file with a maximum size of 15 MB. It can have a sampling rate of 48, 44.1, 32, 22.05, or 11.025 kHz.
• The sounds can’t be deleted individually from kits after they are loaded, you only have the option to delete all samples from a kit at once.

In addition to loading sounds, you can save kits to USB if you run out of user slots on the module.

MIDI Settings

MIDI works as expected on this module, and doesn’t do anything really crazy that you can’t find on other budget modules. This module allows you to choose between either playing the sounds on the module or outputting to MIDI and deactivating the sounds on the module. You are able to change the MIDI notes for each pad, which gives pretty good flexibility in routing to external sound modules or devices.

Expandability

We touched a little bit on the expandability of this module. Here’s what you are able to do:

• Add another cymbal, with a dedicated input on the back for an additional cymbal pad
• Add another tom, with a dedicated input on the back for an additional dual zone tom pad
• Connect the module to external sound modules and devices via MIDI

Some drummers who use this kit have also found it easy to upgrade the hi-hat pads, the kick pads or other pads when needed.

What’s Not Included?

What’s not included, but you probably will also want or need:

• Drum throne
• Headphones
• Nylon tipped drum sticks (sometimes recommended for electronic kits)
• A heavy, flat rug to keep the kit and pedals from slipping around

Setup and Assembly

Some people struggle to set up this kit easily, while others will find it easy. Most people who buy this kit seem to agree that the assembly instructions are lacking and can be a little confusing.

Either way, you’re probably looking at about an hour or less to get this assembled.

A recommendation we have is to study the directions of the clamps and mounting bars very closely before putting them together, this will help prevent backtracking. It also can help to simply look at photos of the kit already assembled, in addition to the instructions, to help see how things are connected and aligned.

Don’t rush assembly, take it slow and you’ll be fine.

When setting up the kit, don’t overly-tighten all the connectors and clamps right away. Only tighten things enough to hold them lightly in place at first, and then once you get the kit fully setup you’ll be able to adjust positioning of everything a lot more easily before finally tightening everything down harder.

Support

People who own this kit have run into varying levels of support response from Alesis. Some have found it easy to get parts replaced, while others have claimed support isn’t very helpful. Overall, as of recent, Alesis support seems to be pretty good and will help you out if you run into any issues. They are known for replacing parts as needed if parts fail or break.

The Verdict

Overall, the Alesis Command X Mesh electronic drum kit is a great sub-$1000 electronic drum kit. You’ll have a lot of fun with the Command Sound Module, it really does stand out when compared to the cheaper offerings from Alesis and other competitors in this price range.

The hardware overall is somewhere between pretty nice and very workable, and isn’t necessarily the cheapest while also being affordable. If you want to get a solid electronic drum kit and don’t want to break the bank, this is a really good place to start looking.