I canāt believe it, the touch sensitivity is totally there. Nothingās ever come close to competing with my Zendrums before. I can play stroke rolls with fingers 2-3 and and fingers 3-4 piano-style trills so that you donāt have to devote two hands to simply playing a roll. Pad sensitivity makes the pinky is usable. Most importantly, it has real dynamic range, which you canāt tell for sure from the demos.
The drawback is the pad size, which was expected. Actually, I can trill all but the two small tom pads, and even those kind of. But the compactness makes it so that I canāt do things Iād do on a Zendrum. Itās not just the Zendrumās larger triggers, but their being circular lets you rotate your hands as needed to do what you want. The FGDPās rectangular pads have optimal angles for playing without missing the sweet spot. That limitation could be overcome by getting a second FGDP (!) and rotating them so that your hands cover the entire thing at a comfortable angle. The current design allows some hand rotation for comfort by elongating those drum and snare triggers so much, so maybe itās something I can get used to over time, though I think Iāll always need the larger Zendrum layout for more intricate percussion lines.
The downside with Zendrum is the ancient design means it does only one thing (MIDI Note On followed by uncontrollable Note Off with full range dynamics, but no aftertouch), though it does that really well with zero cross talk. No built-in kit patches, of course, so that Zendrum is always a 2-piece rig, and Iām always questing for a quality percussion sound module to untether me from the computer. This FGDP, by the way, has no crosstalk either, and I bet its surprising weight has something to do with keeping the pads isolated from the strike vibrations. The weight also makes it stable enough to play in your lap (but resting on two legs, not one or else it will wobble), which was another welcome surprise because I really donāt like tabletop. And then you get all the digital control and functionalities, aftertouch, fast kit changes, etc. Aftertouch is great for automated, yet humanized, velocity sensitive stroke rolls (no machine gunning). I set every pad to repeat at 1/32. All with a modern, fast UI, as opposed to the Zendrumās 7-segment LED and the elaborate moves you have to make for simple changes (like patch change) that require 10 seconds of physical movement and more.
FGDPās sounds are passable. By that I mean fun to play, and with a good variety, but not the professional sound of something like Superior Drummer, whose velocity layers animate it so much more. Iāll eventually try FGDP as a controller for SD, but thatās not what I bought the FGDP for.
Iām miffed about the battery being non-user replaceable. I hope someone posts an online hack for how to do that. Actually, I didnāt know it was even battery-powered when I placed the order. This is one device that I might actually use untethered sometimes due to the passable built-in speaker.
ADDED: Itās freakin great with Superior Drummer. Wonderful, natural finger response at the default ānormalā velocity curve. Again, I canāt believe it. As soon as I plugged the USB into the laptop, though, the FGDPās audio out started making a lot of noise on my mixer. Thatās not unexpected, but I donāt have a lot of use for the audio out because, as @DimensionsTomorrow points out, once you go drum plugin, you never go back. I can go with the built-in speaker for computerless practicing and can always plug in earphones to get a better sound on the couch.
Iād seriously consider getting a second one to devote one per hand if I could somehow clamp them side-by-side and set that thing on my lap. If anyone can think of a practical solution that would allow access to the side buttons of the unit on the right, that would be useful. Otherwise, I donāt see how you could have two on your lap without wobbling.
