Alesis Sample Pad 4 - Compact Percussion and Sample Triggering Instrument with 4 Velocity Sensitive Pads, 25 Drum Sounds and SD/SDHC Card Slot

Loads of fun. Sort of old technology but who cares. I like that you can use your own samples. And reverb too! Lots of options. This is a great substitute for the non-drummer that just wants to add some real druming to his/her recordings. Banging on pads is a lot more fun then adding "qunantization, groove, humanizing" DAW otions. I'm old school and like to use my body to make music. ;-)

I've had this for around a year now. Use it live exclusively. So far, I've had ZERO problems. IT's been a very solid piece of gear. I downloaded all the Alesis sounds onto the card, but mostly I use the built in sounds. I don't need a ton of samples these days, but I do need things like handclap. I could get tamborine/cowbell setups, but our mixer is out of inputs, so I use these electronic versions. Nice that it has built in reverb! I've yet to use an external trigger, but I"m thinking about it. I could use a small pad, right honey? Pros: good clean sounds, small size fits anywhere. Pads are nice. Solid construction and dependable performance. . Cons: I'd like a brighter view screen for outdoor shows. Not a big con, but I thought I'd mention it. Once in a while, the SD card pops loose, and I have to push it back in. This happens when casing / uncasing it, User error, but if it were inset somehow where one couldn't accidentally hit it, it would be better. Wish list. Make the same item with two more bar shaped pads along the bottom with a couple of more inputs, and you could built an entire drum set with this. Would be cool if it came in a roundish shape.

There is a little crosstalk, and if I were performing with it I'd probably need to upgrade, but all I'm using it for is to trigger MIDI in Reaper, where it's easy enough to clean up an extra hit. For that it's not bad at all. I can run a song in Reaper, map a cymbal or something, and record some hits while it's playing, on a new track, which was what I needed to do. The provided self-generated sounds are fine but really not too useful if you have better sounds in your plugins or in a program like Superior Drummer 3. This controller works well for MIDI and is easy enough to map. No comment on using it standalone. This controller is designed to be hit with sticks and won't work well if you hit it with your hands. With sticks you'll get enough crosstalk that it would ruin your day if you couldn't erase the extra hits later. But as an alternative to hitting keyboard keys to try and create human-edged beats, which is impossible imo, this is a very good tool to have. It's smallish. I have the Gibraltar stand which is a bit overkill but nice. Good value if you aren't gigging with it.

Purchased this used, and its condition reflects that to be sure. However, its functionality is excellent! Despite being used and a little banged up, the triggers still work excellently and respond to pressure well. It's a super reliable device. Would recommend it to others, and would trust a purchase from this same vendor again.

So I purchased this controller as a means to add drum tracks to my recordings WITHOUT spending a fortune on a Roland, even though the reviews were.. eh.. OK. So, out of the box and running directly into the DAW via USB worked well from a MIDI standpoint, but where this things starts going to the darkside is the outputs and SD card. Make no mistake, it IS quiet IF you run it into a audio controller (Focusrite, Presonus) on a LINE input without any pre-amp or gain, Literally had to nearly max all inputs.. Now if you run it into the MIC connections via the 1/4 or XLR that has gain, it will work better.. The only way I got any decent output out of this device was to run a Radial J48 active DI and running phantom power off the Focusrite, gave the device a good amount of head room where when dialed in about 1/3 to 1/2 gave very good output. WIth that being said, I should NOT have to use two pre-amps (focusrite and J48) to get good output. Now the second issue and a biggie being the SD card reader. This is KEY if you want to add many samples on the pad. Alesis gives a great zip files with tons of samples, thus the SD card. My SD card reader on the sample pad lasted one week and the would give a "Card Read Error" and would no longer read ANY SD card. Contacted support and this seems to be a common issue, which yes, they will cover it under warranty, but unless I was just using this for studio work would not be a good option on the road, especially if I needed multiple kits available on a SD card which seems to have a mind of its own. Returned. I am going to give Alesis one more opportunity with the strike pad, yes its more, but I guess you get what you pay for..

Perfect, no complaints.

I really wanted to give this a chance due to the price, but it is full of issues: - As stated in a lot of other reviews, hitting one pad can trigger other pads far too easily and far too often. - I saved 7 kits before our first show, and when I turned the Alesis on during setup, all kits had disappeared. Had to reload everything on the spot. - I turned it on the yesterday, and much to my dismay all sound outputs from the unit are muffled and distorted. Tried different cables and speaker, and its the unit. TLDR: far too many possibilities of device malfunction to be worth the purchase, even at the low price.

We bought one of these to use in live performance. We're a working, somewhat "serious" band, and we don't exactly take it easy on our equipment. This failed the test. Horribly. Pros: When it works, it sounds pretty good! After she re-programmed the drum sounds (the factory ones are terrible), our drummer can make it sound like an entire drum kit! And much more portable. Cons: You never know when it's going to stop working or do something strange. Here are some things it has done: 1) Line noise. Other reviews commented on this as well. It generates a hum which sounds like a ground loop, even though there isn't one. Sometimes you can hear it, sometimes you can't. No idea why. 2) Not durable. The pad triggers "bleed" into each other -- you hit one pad, and it makes the sounds from other pads. This is also common and discussed on the Alesis support forums. Is this because we hit it with a stick too many times? Maybe. But that's what drummers do!!! 3) Bad control placement. When you're playing, it's pretty easy to accidentally hit one of the arrow buttons. Our drummer does this all the time. It switches the patch. So, in the middle of a performance, all of the sudden the sounds change! 4) Incomprehensible tone changes. We haven't figure this one out. For no apparent reason, the tone of the sound changed during our rehearsal. Everything sounded muffled and ringy. We restored the factory settings and it fixed the problem. But... what the heck? We have no idea what caused this. Conclusion: This might work for a home studio if you treat it very gingerly. But for professional use? No way. It's waaaaaaaaay too fragile. As others have mentioned, the price point is appealing; but, I now wish we'd saved up for the real deal. :-( Anybody wanna buy a used one??