Unfortunately, the kick pedal retains the one thing I didn't like about the Guitar Hero World Tour set: the inability to keep it in place other than by the use of friction. With the Rock Band drum kit, you can put the kick pedal on one of the horizontal crossbars to keep it in place. The kick pedal for the Logitech Wireless Drum Controller sits freely and relies on some of the feet underneath to keep it place. It doesn't work very well on the carpet that I have so it would constantly move forward and I was only playing on a medium setting. When testing a few songs on expert setting, it didn't take long for the kick pedal to move into an uncomfortable position with the increase in amount of kick notes. I know that Logitech wanted to have the least amount of bars for easy fold up and storage but I would've liked to have something like a collapsible horizontal bar for the kick pedal to attach to.
Everything though feels like they are built to take a pounding. Each piece is solid and has a nice heft to it. The crossbar is metal and is designed to really hold everything together pretty well. We're not talking any plastic shafts as everything is metal that connects to a pad or cymbal. You're really paying for a solid piece of equipment here built to take punishment and built to last a long time. That's what I would expect spending over $200 for the set and I'm glad to see everything's constructed from highly durable materials.
You can see on the main crossbar some horizontal notches embedded into the frame. This helps keep the clip in position but it also prevents easy rotation of the clips. That's actually beneficial when playing because as you are banging away on the drum pads, you don't want them to rotate out of position. The notches also serve as a detriment though when taking it apart or putting it into position as you have to get the clip just right to close up. I had a hell of a time trying to get one of the clips to close up because the bar, notches, and clip design was preventing the hand screw from reaching the hole to latch on to. It took a little time to get used to how to latch it closed but it was a little frustrating the first few times.
The legs of the crossbar rotate out to let the drum kit stand up but don't lock into place. Even so, I found no issues when playing as they pretty much stayed where they are the entire time. You can also raise and lower the entire crossbar and what's nice is each leg has white notches etched in so you can see how high each leg is. This makes matching the two up a lot easier than to try and guess the length and they both lock into place with pressure clips.
The great, great thing about this drum kit is the ability to just fold everything in on itself and store it away in a relatively small space compared to other drum kits. Because everything's individually attached, you can rotate every piece around and produce a pretty flat setup as you can see in the picture. It does take a little more effort though to setup and tear down than say the Guitar Hero World Tour drum kit however. Since each item is attached to the main frame with a clip you would think it would be easy to unscrew a little and rotate around. The problem is it's only when the clip is unscrewed to a point where it opens up that you can rotate the piece around. So, it takes a little more effort to close back up and put into a position where the clip is closed up enough to screw together. The clips do have some rubber piece that seems like it would keep it from opening it up completely when unscrewed but I rarely ever had it work that way. It was usually opened all the way even though I tried to keep the small rubber piece in the slot. The handles, wires, and pad design can get in a way a few times when trying to put everything together or folding it up. I've had a few times where I had to move or unscrew another piece so I can place one I'm trying to put away in the right position. In any case, it does take some practice to get it moving around smoothly but once you do it's not that bad to set everything up or fold everything down again.
Like the Guitar Hero World Tour set, you can use Logitech Wireless Drum Controller in both Rock Band and Guitar Hero series of games and I used both plus The Beatles: Rock Band as well. Firing up the games, I found the drums to work perfectly well with all the games I tried. This is a stark contrast to the Guitar Hero World Tour set that I had where the red drum pad and orange cymbal would not register frequently. The drum pads had a nice feel when struck while they were also quiet as well. Everything seemed pretty accurate and I didn't notice anything wrong with hitting the notes with either the drums or the kick pedal. Like I said before, I loved how the drum pads felt when being hit as they give a nice bounce back when struck. Playing the Logitech Wireless Drum Controller with the pads and cymbals set to where I want them was such a joy compared to the default drum kits. It was hard to go back to the regular ones as they just didn't feel right anymore and I was spoiled by how I could place everything wherever I wanted.
You are going to shell out a lot of money for this set though as the cost of the Wireless Drum Controller is more than some consoles. At $229, it's roughly $22 less than the Ion Drum Rocker Kit I found on Buy.com for $251. Still, these puppies sure are solid and offer some nice features. It's really great to be able to fold all the parts up into a nice compact package for storage. While it does take a little more time than a stock drum kit to setup and teardown, the effort is worth it and you'll be able to adjust all the surfaces in a nice wide range of angles that's comfortable to you. It's just too bad there's no way to anchor the kick pedal as the thing moves way too much on the carpet I tried. Performance is solid and responsive and while I'm no expert drummer, I can definitely tell the difference between the Logitech Wireless Drum Controller and the default kits. It's built solid and built to last so those that do do a lot of drumming, the $229 might be well spent rather than purchasing the inferior plastic drum kits.
B+
If you want a nicely built drum kit, the Logitech Wireless Drum Controller for the Xbox 360 is one that you can't go wrong with. There are still a few issues such as the lack of an anchor for the kick pedal and ease of setup or teardown but for the most part Logitech did right. It's expensive though so only pick up if you are a heavy drummer in music games.
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