Summer NAMM 2016: Slate and Pearl introduce the Mimic Pro drum brain
Can the real thing possibly live up to the hype?
Oh Steven Slate, god love him. He’s about to, once again, revolutionise our lives and rock our world by being more awesomely self-assured than anyone can possibly bear. Together with drum manufacturer Pearl they have created the Mimic Pro, the most advanced, most awesome, multi-velocity layered, 24 bit sampled rootin’ tootin’ drum brain ever conceived. I eat up this type of marketing with a spoon.
Mimic Pro Features
It’s a box with a nice 7″ touch screen on the top and inside there’s a sampling drum machine. The touch screen makes it easy to select your kits, customise the choices and decide what sound you’re going to use from a library of “world class” samples. Although I’m not sure how well touch screens mix with the rivers of sweat and beer associated with drummers – or being inadvertently hit with a stick. It comes with an internal 60GB SSD drive, high-end Burr Brown converters and multi-channel samples. On the back there are 16 audio inputs and 16 audio outputs, plus support for triple and dual zone cymbals.
You have control over microphone balances between close, overhead and room mics and equalisation, dynamic and velocity curves. Finishing up with full mix control over every sound. One nice feature is the ability to create a separate headphone mix to the master mix to suit what you want to hear.
Mimic Pro can be used with the Pearl TruTrack Pads that can drop into any acoustic drum kit. It also ships with presets that allow it to work with electronic drums from other top manufacturers.
There’s certainly room for a new upmarket drum brain. The usual suspects from Roland (TD-30), Yamaha (DTX700) and Alesis (DM10) are looking a bit long in the tooth and a bit clunky. There’s been a lot of development in the lower end with cheap full electronic kits from all sorts of places so something a bit more “pro” is very welcome.
No price or ETA as yet but more information is available on the Pearl Drums Mimic Pro product page.
For an additional whole-hearted dose of Steven Slate awesomeness check out the Mimic Pro introduction video below:
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