So despite my previous dragging of feet, I finally went ahead and preordered a TDW-20 after I heard through the rumor mill that Full Compass was offering them for around $360 USD, shipping included.

What really gets my goat though is why this isn't their advertised price? At the time I placed my order, their reported list price was $599 and the price they were offering under their "low price guarantee" was $495. I'd never before encountered a situation before where phoning in an order resulted in a nearly 30% savings over an Internet price, especially one that claimed to have a "low price guarantee".

Look, I'm not complaining -- $360 was low enough for me to take the plunge and buy the card. It does make me wonder though how many times I've gotten the shaft by paying what seemed to be the lowest price on the Internet. I guess we should all start getting quotes over the phone again.

So the word that Roland was finally coming out with the much anticipated module update to the TD-20 has kinda knocked me off my footing. I've been waiting (sometimes less than patiently) for over 2 years now for this card to come out and you'd think I'd be overjoyed now that it finally has, but somehow the final product just doesn't seem like it'll live up to the waiting. At this point, I'm not even 100% sure I'll pick one up.

Don't get me wrong, the TDW-20 does add a lot of new features -- but the MSRP of nearly $500 doesn't quite seem justified. The only features that I truly know I'd be interested in are the enhanced hi-hat resolution and support for fitting all of my kit collection onto one compact flash card. The rest of it, while nice, just doesn't blow my skirt up. I really was hoping for positional sensing and interval control on the toms, and while the unit does have 300 new sounds, I've yet to see a list or hear samples of what they actually are. Historically I've only ever found about 10% of Roland's sounds useful anyhow, so chances are there are only a few new ones I'd be interested in.

*sigh*

Maybe I'll pick one up if they drop below say $299. Paying anything more just doesn't make sense to me right now.

Started work on converting the 13" snare from the Chameleon kit. I don't anticipate running into any major problems with this one, seems pretty cut and dry. I am however looking forward to applying some of the lessons learned from my first attempt, with the 10" tom.

Here are some pics of the snare before I started:

[More...]

I've finally begun work on the electronic conversion of the kit I purchased a while back. I'm starting with the high tom (10") since it should be the easiest to convert.

Here are some pictures of the procedure.

[More...]

One of the more pointlessly time-consuming aspects of setting up an electronic kit is plugging everything into the module. For trigger inputs alone there are 16 cables that you need to plug in for a Roland TD-20. Digging around in a bundle of 16 jacks and plugging them all in can be a major drag, worse still, if you should mix two up and don't have enough time for a sound-check so that you can discover the mix-up, you're gonna be in for an interesting show.

Enter the Kable Keeper!

My loving wife put these together to help me out.

[More...]

Just got a new toy, a Tama Air Ride stand for my snare. This thing is perfect for mounting a PD-125, which is generally too small to fit into a standard snare basket comfortably. Air ride stands come in two flavors, one with Star-Cast mounts and one with just an L-rod. Since the Roland PD-125 already has an L-rod mount, I went with the latter.

This is simply an awesome snare stand.. small yet massive, it hardly takes up any room between my pedals but doesn't wobble a bit while wailing on it. A perfect match for a Roland TD-20 kit.

Daniel and I took some pics while setting it up: slide show