Alesis Forge Drum Kit Review, Mods, Double Bass Pedal Workaround/Fix

I've had this kit now for about 6 months. I like it a lot and got it for an extremely good price used. I also have some reservations about it, which I will go into later on.

First of all: what's to like?  This kit represents really good value for money particularly if you can find one used as I did.  It comes on a fairly solid rack mount which doesn't use too much floor space and although all the drums are solid rubber pads they play fine.  The kit is expandable and the module is very good indeed, lots of high quality sound and kit options, some great practice tracks included and great midi/usb potential.  Lots of editing possibilities too.

I use the kit for practice and some recording into Logic.  It is perfect for both these things.  I particularly like it for recording as there is no need to mess with midi interfaces, our mixing up an acoustic kit. I can lay down my own basic grooves and then tweak the midi recording to my heart's content.

This kit is great for making your own mods.  A bit of careful eBay work and you can score all sorts of extras for very little money compared to Roland and Yamaha kits.  I managed to get my DM5 Pro cymbals for free by buying three and selling on one for more than I bought the three for in the first place!


Here's where I come to some of the drawbacks of the kit.  Alesis, in their infinite wisdom, gave the Forge the same drum module as a number of higher end kits, but they crippled the firmware in the Forge module!  I can't for the life of me understand why they did this.  It means that the toms are single input only, and even though I have added dual sensor toms to the kit the rims won't speak to the module.  Why Alesis?  Surely you can give us all an update to the firmware to fix this? I do recommend doing what I have done though. I replaced the snare with a Crimson mesh snare which is much nicer to play than a rubber pad.  I've now removed the three original toms and replaced them with the Forge snare and a couple of other toms I got cheaply on eBay.  The Forge snare plays much better than the original toms supplied with the kit.

I've added a double bass pedal to my kit for practicing the techniques associated with this pedal.  Here's my next gripe.  To use a double bass pedal I've had to reassign the inputs as for some reason I can't fathom, the Forge module can't register fast kick drum beats.  Even fast double kicking with a single pedal doesn't pick up properly.  The work around is to create user kits and plug the kick drum into the spare cymbal input. You can then reassign the kick drum to this input in the menus. Then you can kick drum as fast as you like with no issues. If you want to add a second crash cymbal like I have done you can use the kick drum cable and again reassign the sounds in a user kit. Mostly I find this is fine as the crash only gets single hits.   Again why have you done this Alesis?  Surely this is a quick firm/software fix to put right for your customers?

The cymbals are only single sound (with choke) on this kit.  At this price point I wouldn't expect more, but I have used the spare inputs on the module to give me two extra cymbals.  I usually use a ride bell on one and an extra crash on the other.  This makes the kit a bit more flexible, and is a cheap mod if you can find some used cymbals to add in.

All in all if you are like me and in the position where you want an electronic kit for general use and don't want to pay a lot of money to get there, this is a very good kit to go for.   It is very flexible and expandable. Alesis have a lot of good cheap products you can add in.  I use the Sample Pad with this kit for example, and you can either use it to trigger midi sounds in the Forge Module or use your own samples from the Sample Pad.  I could see myself working with my band on some silent rehearsals using this kit, and plugging guitars into the mixing desk using modelling modules.  It would give a lot more flexibility as to where we can rehearse.  If it wasn't for some silly errors and omissions this would be a really, really great kit.


Update 2020

I've used some wheeler dealing to continue to upgrade this kit. There's a lively market for pads and parts so I've sold on the rubber pads and replaced them all with mesh ones which are better to play and quieter. I managed to sell on the brain for the same price as a secondhand Crimson module which unlocks all the dual and triple functions on the pads, and I'm really happy with this. I've then replaced the cymbals with a triple action ride and larger crash dual action which makes the kit much more functional for different techniques.

This has all been done at very little extra cost by buying low and selling high, so I'm now very happy with the kit and have got about as far as I can with upgrades, and can concentrate on playing!