First of all I’d like to point out that Platinum Samples have great customer service. I personally had an install issue but within hours Rail (the owner of Platinum Samples) had contacted me and arranged uploads of the files I had trouble with and arranged the sending of spare discs to replace the ones I had issues with. This was during the Christmas holiday period, when many people are off work. So a big thumbs up to Platinum Samples as a company and Rail as a good guy to deal with.
Now to my short demo track..
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10105307
It uses the Glamouflange kit (kit 5) but with the cymbals from kit 4 and the ride from kit 6. There is some plate reverb added to the snare in logic. In the chorus the snare is doubled with the Tama Superstar Big Red.
Now to my impressions of Evil Drums. Well where to start? Actually that is a good question! You get six kits, three recorded at Grandmaster Recorders and three recorded at Sound City studios. Each kit has its own set of toms, cymbals, rides, hihats, kick and snare. In addition there are also six more snares and six more kicks (with an additional kick on registering your product) recorded at Sound City studios. I’ve heard its recommended that you only mix kit pieces from within the same studio, and while you can mix and match as much as you please it does make sense to keep to the same studio as otherwise the ambience tracks won’t ‘gel’ as well. But really this is all down to personal choice, so you can do whatever suits your track.
So how does it sound? Well in short, it sounds great. There are a lot of options to be had here, and while the title says ‘evil drums’ you could easily use these drum sounds for any type of rock music, and if you turn down the velocities enough even modern softer rock styles. It sounds a bit drier than Avatar which is a good thing, it really contrasts well to the huge room sound of avatar, so if you were looking at buying a different SDX to totally contrast avatar it would be a good bet especially if you can still get it on the half price deal.
The kicks all sound nice and full (most are thicker than the stock avatar kicks) with plenty to choose from, and with 12 snare drums to choose from you’re bound to find something that will suit your track. However the nicest thing for me in contrast to avatar was the tone and choice of toms available, six sets to be precise. Sure there are only 3 or sometimes 2 per kit but they sound great. The cymbals/rides/hihats all match their kits well and I find are interchangeable quite well within their respective studios. If you want a bigger kit you could set up X drums to add more cymbals from the same studio and it seems to sound pretty good. Also you could try tuning a tom up or down a little to use as a makeshift 4th tom etc but that is probably unnecessary as at a push you could just use a different tom from the same studio as an X drum.
So to sum up – Evil Drums is a winner! Its got great stock sounds, plenty of versatility, plenty of character, loads of great sounding presets and the company that makes it has great customer service. Could not recommend it enough.
Hope people find this review useful or enjoy my tune. Thanks for listening/reading
– Max
