6 Best Double Bass Electronic Drum Sets – Dual Kick Pedals

My initial impression of the Roland TD-1DMK was that it’s a basic electronic kit for anyone needing mesh heads and no fancy features that would increase the price. Although that’s partly true, this kit does offer a bit more.

Each pad has a tunable mesh head, meaning you can change the tension to get it to feel as natural as your acoustic kit.

Different drummers like different tensions, making this a versatile feature. The mesh heads are a definite bonus for the price this kit comes at.

The module is fairly simple. It has 15 preset kits, a built-in metronome, a recording function, and a rhythm trainer. The preset kits are your classic Roland samples that come with all their low and mid-tier electronic kits. They sound realistic and give you plenty of options for different songs.

The bass drum pad is a small piece of rubber that is attached to one of the legs of the kit. Typically, an electronic kit would have its own bass drum tower. However, this pad saves space and has a size that is perfectly suited for two pedals.

You’d think it would lose some of the stability, but it handles hard double pedal playing perfectly fine. If you’re not a fan of this kick pad, you could always replace it with one of Roland’s standalone kick towers such as the KD-120.

The larger size of the KD-120 would make double pedal playing even better with this kit.

One downside to this kit is that the hi-hat pedal is a trigger that isn’t connected to the pad, stopping you from getting the feel of a real hi-hat stand.

Another small thing I found is that you need to lift your foot almost completely off the hi-hat pedal to get an open hi-hat sound. If your current technique doesn’t involve your foot doing that, you may struggle a bit at first with this drum kit.

If you’re going to upgrade the kick pad, you may as well go the full mile and upgrade the hi-hat pedal as well and attach a dedicated hi-hat stand. However, the kit is more than good enough as it is for most drummers.

One great thing about Alesis is how they offer mesh head kits at affordable prices. Although these heads aren’t as high-quality as the ones on higher-end kits, they’re still better than rubber pads any day of the week.

The Nitro Mesh is a great starter kit for beginners, providing smooth sounds and authentic feel.

The drum module has 40 preset kits and 385 onboard sounds. Don’t expect these to sound like professional studio samples. However, do expect to have a lot of fun playing around with all the different sounds.

This kit is great for beginners because the pads are large and you can place them spaced out from each other. You’ll often find that cheaper kits have small pads and a small footprint, meaning you won’t get the same spatial awareness that you’d have on an acoustic kit.

This can mess up your muscle memory and is extremely detrimental for beginners who are at the early stages of drumming development.

It’s quite rare to get a solid kick drum tower in a cheaper electronic drum kit, so it’s a great feature of this set. I often recommend Alesis sets for my students as they’re the most affordable e-kits you can get that have great features that will benefit your technique on acoustic kits.

While the pad can house the double pedal, drummers with advanced double pedal skills probably won’t be satisfied with it. I found the pedals to get loose with fast pattern playing.

The beaters also don’t have a solid impact unless you position them accurately in the middle of the pad. So, I’d only suggest beginners get this kit if you’re getting it for double pedal use.

Overall, the Alesis Nitro Mesh is a fantastic entry-level electronic kit with a sturdy kick drum tower that can house a double pedal.

Roland’s VAD series of drums have the best of both worlds by combining electronic pads with acoustic shells, giving you a versatile e-kit that looks and feels like an acoustic kit. The VAD kit comes in 3 versions and the VAD306 is the most affordable.

The first thing you’ll notice on this kit is the shallow drum shells. The 10” rack toms and 12” snare drum and floor tom give it the resemblance of a fusion kit with shallow drums.

The shells have a smooth black wrap and chrome hardware for an eye-catching appearance. The 18” kick drum produces a thick feel when played, emulating the feel of an acoustic kit.

The cymbal setup is pretty standard with a hi-hat, 2 crashes, and a ride. All the cymbal pads mount onto regular drum hardware stands. The toms also come with mounts to attach to the cymbal stands.

The kit comes with a Roland TD-17 module. This module was Roland’s flagship drum module for a while, meaning it’s packed with high-quality features. The most notable one would be Roland’s Prismatic Sound Modeling Engine that allows you to drastically edit your sounds.

Although this is the cheapest version of the VAD series, it’s still quite costly. The large and thick bass drum is perfectly suited for double pedal playing, making the kit well worth the money along with all its features.

In my humble opinion, I think this is the closest any electronic kit has come to feeling and looking like an acoustic kit. Many companies have tried over the years, but Roland have nailed it. I wouldn’t be phased if I had to use this kit in a bunch of live situations. It looks and feels fantastic.

In terms of double pedal playing, I found the bass drum pad to be very responsive, yet it keeps the loose rebound that you’d expect to feel on an acoustic drum head. You could change this if you wanted to by tightening it up to get a jazzy bounce. However, I think the looser tuning is way better for double pedal playing.

Continuing with the trend of affordable mesh pads, the Alesis Surge is an intermediate drum kit that provides those and a bit more. Add to that the size of the drum pads and you’ve got yourself a winner.

The 10” snare drum pad and 8” tom pads make this kit a competitive product.

The module has 24 preset drum kits and 385 onboard sounds, giving you plenty to work with. The samples aren’t the highest quality, but they’ll get the job done for casual practice or learning.

The kit has an 8” kick pad tower that is very sturdy. It comes with an Alesis kick pedal that isn’t great. However, your replacement double pedal will work wonders. The sturdiness of the tower will take on heavy kick patterns.

The Surge isn’t as popular as the Nitro. However, I think it’s a good addition to this list thanks to the slightly larger bass drum bad. The features are much the same, so you’ll just be paying more for the larger pads.

If you want a kit that is still affordable but slightly better than the Nitro, the Surge is a viable option.

I know some drummers who love this kit because it’s cheap and the pads are great. Even though they’re not fans of the onboard sounds, they still heavily use the kit to practice. Instead of relying on the module, they plug the kit into a computer and use a VST to get some better sounds to play around with.

If you’re not keen on going through the extra effort that’s involved with that, I’d suggest this kit would work mainly for beginners.

The Yamaha DTX6K-X takes many of the features from Yamaha’s higher-quality kits and packs it into an affordable workhorse. The DTX-PRO module along with the multi-zone drum pads make this a highly sought after kit.

The standout feature of the kit is the drum module. It looks a bit different from other modules, almost resembling a drum machine from the 20th century. It has 40 preset kits and 200 spaces for custom kits. As expected from Yamaha, the samples are top-quality.

The snare pad has 3 zones, allowing you to produce all the sounds you’d be able to from an acoustic snare. The ride also has 3 zones and can be choked.

The kick drum tower handles double pedals fairly well. However, you could replace it with Yamaha’s 10” electronic kick tower pad for more size and stability.

One downside to this kit is that the toms are rubber pads. However, most Yamaha e-kits are like this and they’re still loved products.

While the kit doesn’t offer the same pad quality as some of the others do, I think the strength is in the sounds. Yamaha uses real acoustic drums to sample their sounds for their e-kits. The other brands create their samples from scratch. You could argue that the Yamaha sounds are way more authentic.

This module, in particular, allows you to play incredibly fast notes without machine gunning. Machine gunning refers to when you play too many notes and they end up sounding incredibly robotic. Fast double pedal patterns still sound relatively authentic.

I’d recommend this kit to drummers of all levels as everyone can get something good out of it. The rubber pads are a bit of a bummer, but they’re definitely not the end of the world.

Ending off this list is Alesis’ pride and joy, the Strike Pro Special Edition. Being their top kit, the Strike offers a serious amount of value. It mixes acoustic shells with electronic pads and has bigger cymbal pads than any other electronic kit.

The main selling point would be the 20” kick drum. It perfectly replicates the feel of an acoustic kick, making it one of the best options for double pedal playing.

The pads are highly responsive and can be tuned to be tight or loose. The snare, toms, and crash cymbals all have two zones, giving you plenty of playing options.

The drum module has a huge amount of content packed into it. This includes 136 custom kits and over 1800 onboard sounds. Unlike the other Alesis modules on this list, these samples sound wonderful. Every sound on the module can be edited with a variety of options.

If you want one of the top electronic kits on the market that still comes in at a relatively affordable price, the Strike Pro is a great option. It’s still quite expensive, but it’s a lot cheaper than the top-of-the-range Rolands and Yamahas.

I love the Roland VAD306 kit, but I feel like the Alesis Strike is the better deal as it comes with way more drums and features. If you’re someone who plays metal on a huge kit with multiple cymbals and drums, this is pretty much the only electronic kit that is made for you. Every other kit will involve huge costs to add drum and cymbal pads.

One thing that I don’t like about the kit is that it only comes in one color. I feel like that limits your creative choice in how you want your drums to look. The standard black color of all the other e-kits fits better in most situations. With that being said, seeing different colors in these e-kits with wooden shells is something I’d love to see more of.