Gear Recommendations

I'm always getting asked what gear I recommend, which is a very difficult question to answer as it depends on so many things. However, there are a few products which I think every edrummer should own or at least try.
 

Here are my recommendations at the moment.

Great Headphones For Drummers

The Sennheiser HD25 headphones are great for drummers - loud, loads of bottom end and good grip on the head. They can also handle the spikes (or transients) of drums. Recommended (I always have a pair in my travel bag)

Best eDrum Accesory

The Porter and Davies BC and Gigster monitor thrones let you 'hear' what you've been missing from your kit sound. Except they don't let you hear it - the stool vibrates and the vibrations are transferred through your skeleton so you 'feel' the low end without having a massive monitor behind you. A truly eye opening experience.

Best iOS App for Percussion

Pete Lockett's Drum Jam is all the percussion you'll ever need, played by a superb musician. You can create precision tracks then export them in high quality files to use in any other program you choose... or import them into your ekit. iPad or iPhone

Most Powerful VST Drum Plug-in

Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 (SD3). Just THE most unbelievably powerful and  great sounding plug in. This really has raised the bar as far as drum plug ins are concerned. At the moment, you really don't need anything else.

If its a bit expensive, check out the Toontrack EZdrummer 2 (EZ2) range of plugins. Same quality, fewer features. 

Best DAW For Drummers

Hands down, the best DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for drummers is Ableton Live. Unbelievably powerful, as flexible as anyone could possibly need (I've never met two people who use Ableton in exactly the same way), and capable of providing everything for the digital drummer, Ableton just can't be beat. Yes, initially you might scratch your head as you look at it (it can look and behave unlike any other DAW to the new user), but pull some samples into DrumRack, add some effects, link it to your drum pads (click on one button and hit each pad - simple) and away you go. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!

Best Product For Making Your Acoustic Kit Sound Amazing

The Yamaha EAD-10 is an amazing bit of kit. It captures the sound of your acoustic kit and does lots of eyebrow raising things with it. You can add effects (delays, reverbs, distortion etc), and layer samples with your acoustic sound. Its such a small package, so powerful, great fun, and best of all... ridiculously easy to use.

Most Powerful Multipad

A controversial one as many will think this is here for political reasons, but it's not - the Yamaha DTX M12 is by far the most powerful multipad on the planet. If you want purely sample space, look at the Roland SPDSX, but if you want sounds, layering, hand playing, mute groups, midi control (perfect for Ableton), effects and loads more, then the M12 is the only place to go. It has an iOS editor (though to be honest I don't use it as I am faster working straight on the hardware now), and has a couple of areas that need improving (such as outputs etc) but it is SO powerful. The learning curve can be relatively steep but so rewarding.