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The clarity of tone that you get from the toms would be ideal for r’n’b players

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Over the years, ddrum has worked hard to raise its profile in the traditional drum market, securing itself such endorsees as Trivium's Travis Smith and Megadeth's Shawn Drover. We're now at the point where ddrum acoustic kits are less of a novelty and, with sets like the Dios Bubinga here, the company clearly has its sights set on being taken seriously as a producer of both electronic and acoustic products.

Corporate responsibility

When we talk about 'the company', a little clarification is probably needed in order to understand something of where this kit sprang from. Previously owned by Swedish synth maker Clavia (responsible for the massively popular Nord keyboards), the ddrum brand was sold to its US distributor, Armadillo Enterprises in 2005. At the time ddrum was all about triggers and modules, but Armadillo reckoned there was a gap in the market for a new range of ddrum-branded kits; and therefore they went about producing an expansive line that currently starts with the D2 beginner kit and culminates with stuff like Travis's signature outfit and the exotic wood Dios.

It was an ambitious and large-scale exercise.

The first impression of the Dios Bubinga is one of an interesting mix of sizes, something that's always welcome in our book. Instead of the usual 14"x5½" snare, ddrum opts to furnish the Dios with a 13"x7" snare which partners a hugely deep 22"x20" kick drum and shallow-ish toms of 10"x8", 12"x8" and 16"x13". As such it comes across as a very contemporary set-up - shallow toms for fast response, long bass drum for cannon-like boom and a tight-but-deep snare.

Fine fittings

The kit also looks fab. The nice grain and honeyed colour of the bubinga wood is set off with a glossy lacquer and we confess to being very partial to the distinctive lugs used on the toms and kick. The 'mini-bridge' design is very cool and, coupled with the die-cast hoops used on the toms (and indeed snare), lays the Dios's 'high-end' stall out in style.

There are other 'professional' features aplenty on the Dios too. The undrilled bass drum necessitates the use of cradles to support the smaller toms and these are sufficiently low profile to not spoil the look of the shells while being sturdy enough for the task in hand.

And the rest of the supplied hardware is very decent too. Double-braced throughout, the stands are typical of the kind of serious-but-simple stuff that accompanies kits of this standing. There's nothing overly complicated or ground breaking, but cymbal stand tilters allow good positioning possibilities, everything works very smoothly and little touches like the adjustable spikes on the hi-hat stand go to make the metal bits largely easy to live with.

We did, however, come across a couple of minor but unwelcome hardware problems during our time with the Dios.

The first, and most irritating, was the presence of a couple of binding tuning rods - far from offering the kind of slick adjustment expected on this kind of kit, one or two proved extremely difficult to tension, almost to the point where we thought they might be cross-threaded. When you're trying to set and tune a kit 'just so' this kind of thing, as you'll appreciate, can drive you to distraction.

The other, very probably isolated, hiccup was the extending part of the bass drum spur getting stuck in the main shaft. Grabbing the foot and pulling vigorously while jiggling it about a bit had it sorted, but the difficulties arose due to the end section of the leg fouling the clamp when the rubber foot was unscrewed.

We can't see that there's a design fault as such, but it's a shame when such glitches conspire against what is basically a very worthy package.