I play drums as a hobby, and I'm in a band that are going to do (mostly) 80s and 90s heavy metal cover songs. I will almost certainly never make any money from playing music, it's just for fun. So it was with great trepidation that I made an outlay of £500 for a double bass drum pedal. Luckily my girlfriend is chipping in with some birthday present cash, because that's an awful lot of money for a hobby, especially a non-feepaying hobby.
I bought the Pearl
Demon Drive double pedal, and I'm glad I did.
I'm not a good enough player to do a proper review of a drum pedal, so I'll go with what I know. The hype says this pedal is smooth, and it is fast. It's both of those things. Really,
really fast. My old pedal was a bit cack, so anything would seem smooth after it, but I have to say I've never played a pedal quite like the Demon Drive.
The direct drive feature, where the footboard is connected via a simple mechanical linkage instead of a chain or belt, is one of those ideas that sounds like a gimmick. Then you play a direct drive pedal, and suddenly non-direct pedals seem a little old-fashioned. There is no lag. None. The footboard position maps directly onto the beater angle, with no delay on the upstroke. I'm not a jazz player, so I will miss the more subtle aspects of this, but playing fast is a dream - it's almost an embarrassment of riches.
Just as advertised, the slave pedal doesn't feel like a slave pedal. On every other double pedal I've every tried, the left pedal feels sluggish and/or at a different tension. You can compensate with spring tension, but that's not the point - it feels like you've got one slow pedal. The Demon Drive doesn't feel like that at all. I remember enough physics to know that it must be a little different due to the work going on inside the universal joints, but I can't feel it. Since I don't need to solve the equations of motion for the pedal system - just as well, because I was a bit crap at that even when I was supposed to be good at it, 15 years ago - I think it's easily good enough. I no longer care that it's a double pedal.
The conversion from split footboard to longboard is a bit more fiddly than the demo video suggests, but it took about five minutes to do. That's not a problem, because it's not something you're going to want to do, say, in between songs. It's a nice-to-have feature, because I want to try longboard, but I don't want to be stuck with it if I don't like it.
Right now, the jury's out on whether I prefer the longboard. I will have to convert back to split-board and try it, because right now I don't know where the extra speed is coming from. As it stands, I like the longboard a lot for fast stuff, but I'm not sure about it for slower, more expressive parts. I find myself sitting right back on the board so I can ground my heels properly, which makes it difficult to get soft hits because of the extra leverage. It's not impossible, as this is a very smooth and playable pedal, but it makes it a bit harder.
Right now, it feels like a lot of money well spent. I did a 90-minute practise session this morning, and there were a lot of smiles. I can no longer use the 'bad equipment' excuse for not being able to do some stuff, and I just have to get on with it. To my delight and somewhat to my surprise, a lot of parts that were out of reach are now really not too much of a problem.
Add to that the solid build quality of the pedal, the nice case it ships with, and the fact that it's actually nice to look at, you have one seriously compelling piece of kit. I love it.
