dtxtreme 3 special

£2700/$3900

The DTXtreme III comes in two flavours the standard and the special. The Special certainly is a hefty beast mainly due to its new hexagonal rack that also can double up for acoustic drums as well.  This is unique to the 'Special' version of the new DTXtreme series - and it looks and weighs the part. The standard version has a lesser quality rack but somewhat lighter   and comes without the extra floor tom pad.

New style hex rack

The five rubber-faced pads are  simple but streamlined both in terms of looks and operation and to be honest are every bit as good as mesh heads in terms of response and feel.  The spec of the playing surfaces has three zones allowing head, rimshot and cross-stick sounds from the drum pads (where applicable) and bell, bow and edge tones from the cymbals. The pads are also used to trigger various functions such as loops and other effects.

The brain is also impressive with a huge LCD display, a mini-mixer for the kit and clearly laidout- buttons. The DTX brain has MIDI in/outs, USB connections, digital S/PDIF outputs for recording, six individual jack outputs, 15 pad inputs and an Aux/Sampling input (this does require extra memory though).  There are also various ways of hooking up to  PA systems, personal monitoring or digital recording set-ups. Wiring is refreshingly straightforward with clear labelling to indicate what goes where.

The module is straightforward to use considering all the goodies inside, the dedicated sliders on the front panel mean that tweaking can be done on the fly whilst the buttons beneath the big screen allow for  deeper editing. The transport controls to the bottom left of the front panel are used for sequencing (the DTX has a two-track, 152,000-note sequencer built in) and 44 play-along tracks, which are all useful.

DTX3 Module

Hands On

This aint no bedroom kit, well not the sort of bedrooms I'm use to anyway, it feels great to sit behind and easy to get comfortable with.  The size of the pads feel more drum like than Roland's mesh heads and the addition of the tuning knob on each pad is far more pleasing than faffing around with a module setting.

Sonically, it's extremely good with  several Yamaha acoustic drum kits to be found in the presets such as the Oak or Beech Custom kits which with a little bit of tweaking can sound very authentic indeed.

As with all technology, improvements are always noticeable and the DTX3 sounds somewhat more punchier than its predecessors and a hell of a lot more sturdier. Ecymbal technology has not really caught up with the level of improvement of the drums, but this also applies to all manufacturers. The sounds are getting there but the feel and response of the cymbal pads have some way to go, nevertheless this is great fun to play on and will keep you engrossed for hours whilst boring all your mates to tears.

Verdict

The new DTXtreme III is a great and worthy rival to the TD20 and a darn sight cheaper to boot. The pads are no longer a sticking point against Yamaha and it's a real step on from previous DTX's.