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Yamaha treat us to a 12" snare, two 10" high toms, a pair of 12" low toms, two 13" 'crash' pads and a 15" 'ride'

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As one of the heavy hitters in the electronic drum market, whenever Yamaha releases a new e-kit, it's always an occasion. And increasingly so. With the arrival of the Yamaha DTXtreme III flagship a couple of years ago, the Japanese corporation took a significant step up in terms of both playability and sound appeal.

And now they've improved the top end of their DTX range further with the introduction of the new DTX900 module and DTX950K kit.

Build

The big news as far as the kit itself is concerned is the arrival of the new DTX pads. These sport neither straightforward rubber nor mesh heads but instead benefit from a Yamaha innovation, the Textured Cellular Silicon Head.

Clever manufacturing sees air bubbles within the head material manipulated to alter the density of the head depending on application. So the toms feel softer than the snare head, for example, just as they're likely to on an acoustic kit.

This being Yamaha's new top-end offering, the whole kit is impeccably put together, and the chassis on which each head sits is very well engineered. Each of the drum pads is a hefty, well-sized and supremely tough unit, with plenty of rigidity to ward off mis-triggering. And indeed to cope with the rigours of regular set-up and tear down.

This is a kit designed to shrug off the most demanding use, as evidenced in the truly excellent Yamaha Hexrack that holds everything together.

As an acoustic drum-maker, Yamaha has masses of experience of traditional hardware to draw on when it comes to putting together this kind of electro kit. And in fact it draws directly from its acoustic hardware range for the rig here.

Despite having six pads, three cymbals and a module mounted on it, the rack is a thing of beautiful simplicity and fits together with no fuss whatsoever. It's a joy to assemble, which is a rare thing indeed. Hugely sturdy and boasting a fair old footprint, there's no undesirable movement from any part of the rack - and memory locks and over-engineered clamps do sterling service in making consistent set up both quick and secure. Ace.

In terms of what's mounted on the rack, Yamaha treat us to a 12" snare, two 10" high toms, a pair of 12" low toms, two 13" 'crash' pads and a 15" 'ride'. The sizing strikes a good balance between usability and compactness; if you're long of limb the rack allows plenty of scope for a big, expansive set up, but if you like things cosy and close together, the size of the pads doesn't conspire against you.