5 Great Apartment Friendly e-Drums for Christmas
e-Drums for Christmas that won't clutter your living space!
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A guide to the best, smallest and quietest eDrums for Christmas that you can gift the budding drummer in your family, we look at five small footprint kits that won’t annoy your neighbours.
So you have a budding drummer who you want to buy some e-Drums for Christmas, but they live in a small apartment or bedsit. Space is an issue, and so are neighbours above, below and on either side. What are your choices? Let us help!
After each recommendation, I’ve linked to the kit at our affiliate partner and also the kit bundles they offer with added extras for a great deal price that include things like sticks, headphones, drum thrones and stands (Bundle contents may vary).
Apartment Friendly e-Drums for Christmas
e-Drums for Christmas: Roland VQD106 Drum Kit
We kick off this e-Drums for Christmas guide with what is, quite possibly, the best solution for the problem in question. Not only is the Roland VQD106 compact, but they use some of the latest cutting-edge design to reduce acoustic noise to an absolute minimum.
It would be impossible to eliminate the noise completely, but Roland’s engineering team has done a remarkable job with this kit, whilst still delivering an uncompromised playing experience. All the pads, including the cymbals, feature Roland’s famous mesh heads, but the construction of the overall pad is where the clever stuff lies.
The drum pads feature honeycomb inserts that absorb the air pressure, whilst numerous vents allow that air to escape quietly. The snare rim is made of softer rubber than usual for reduced noise and the playing surface of the cymbals also uses a similar mesh design to that of the drums.
However, a big cause of annoyance when playing drums in an apartment is the vibrations that travel down the kit frame to the floor, as well as the sound of the pedals. Roland have come up with spherical feet for all the legs of the frame that absorb most of the vibrations before they reach the floor.
Furthermore, the kick and hi-hat pedals sit on top of noise-dampening pads, reducing the stomping sound transmitted when they’re used. All in all, the VQD-106 is the most expensive kit here, but it is also the very best when it comes to combining superb e-Drums and minimal noise.
e-Drums for Christmas: Alesis Nitro Max Kit
Alesis have been making fine e-Drum kits for a number of years and the bulk of their range is both compact and highly affordable. But small footprint shouldn’t mean poor playing experience and the Nitro Max kit delivers a mesh-head kit without clogging up your precious room space.
The pads are very shallow shells, with a design that takes inspiration from its flagship Strata kit. This allows you to tension the mesh heads to your taste. These heads give you a much more nuanced and desirable feel when playing.
The drum module is pretty straightforward, but you do get BFD Player with this kit meaning you can hook it up to a computer or tablet for a wider range of more authentic sounds. There’s even a handy tablet holder built into the module for easy access.
And when you’re done, the Nitro Max can be collapsed down and tucked away, freeing up your precious floorspace when not in use. A highly recommended entry on our e-Drums for Christmas list!
e-Drums for Christmas: Millenium MPS-450 E-Drum Set
Millenium has built a reputation for delivering solid e-Drum kits at a pretty exceptional price point, and the MPS-450 is no exception. Featuring mesh heads on all the drum pads, the MPS-450 will give you all the feedback you need.
In terms of size and features, the MPS-450 compares favourably to the Nitro Max featured above. The drum module is fairly simple but contains a decent amount of usable sounds. If the onboard sounds don’t batter your drum head, you can always hook it up via MIDI (5-pin or USB) to a computer or tablet and use a drum sample library.
Everything is mounted on a sturdy rack that can be folded down when not in use to free up precious floor space. The standard kit comes with kick and hi-hat pedals, as well as sticks, and if you buy the bundle pack, you’ll also get a drum throne and some headphones!
This is absolutely the best budget buy on the e-Drums for Christmas list here and will satisfy your apartment-dwelling tub-thumper down to the ground!
e-Drums for Christmas: Roland TD-02KV V-Drums Kit
This is the second Roland kit in our list and their most basic of kits, but don’t be fooled. This kit is both stylish, practical and well-featured. Unlike the previous kits, it only has one mesh head, on the snare pad, with the toms all being rubber pads.
Also, the kick pedal has no pad at all! “So how does it make a sound?”, I hear you cry. Well, it’s all down to a very clever kick pedal that builds the trigger into it’s body. This is yet any space-saving feature that yields a little compromise, but it’s still very playable. Just don’t expect to be doing rapid kick drum rolls!
The drum module is small but it does feature a great collection of excellent Roland sounds and those pedals have a much smaller noise footprint, ideal for drummers living in apartments! The crash and ride cymbals both feature choke options.
With the addition of the Boss BT-Dual unit, you can even Bluetooth your favourite songs to the module and play along using headphones. The module also comes with coaching functions for beginners so this is a great kit for first-timers! This is probably the coolest little kit on our e-Drums for Christmas list!
e-Drums for Christmas: Yamaha DTX6K-X E-Drum Set
The last kit on this e-Drums for Christmas list is the Yamaha DTX6K-X. Yamaha e-Drum kits have a very special place in my heart. After drumming on acoustic kits for 20+ years, circumstances saw me needing to downsize significantly. I decided e-Drums were the best solution.
My Yamaha DTXpress served me fantastically, both in the studio and out playing live. It was solid and robust and I still use parts of it in my kit today. Yamaha have maintained their e-Drum presence over the years, despite the likes of Roland and Alesis taking most of the limelight.
And it is fantastic to see Yamaha still making superb kits with great feature sets. Like the Roland TD-02KV, the Yamaha kit features rubber pads for the toms. However, unlike the Roland, the Yamaha’s snare is not mesh, but their patented silicone compound which they claim delivers a very realistic playing surface.
The frame is sturdy and compact and the drum module is very well-featured with a great amount of connectivity and the ability to import your own WAV samples. You can even record your own performances on the internal memory or onto your own USB memory stick.
Better still, the DTX6K-X comes with a free download of Cubase AI so you can start multitracking your drums and building out your compositions! The bundle offer also gets you a throne and kick drum pedal and makes it a really great option for e-Drums for Christmas!
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One response to “5 Great Apartment Friendly e-Drums for Christmas”
As someone who lived below an “E-Drummer” for far too long, there are no apartment friendly drums.