I'd like to start this years first daily write up by saying that I 100% love coming to this show every year.  I love seeing the poeple, the new gear, the old gear, the vibe, just the general celebration of music that goes on in and around the show.  The show is first a foremost a place for manufacturers to conduct business - to get the sales that keep them going and creating and developing products that make our lives as musicians (and media) what it is.  I will attend this show no matter what....because the environment and feel and vibe that surround music is *always* an inspiration to me....

That being said, I walked away from today feeling very uninspired in terms of what I saw.  The range of new products I've seen coming off the show floor this year fell flat for me.  Even Jack left the hall with much the same feeling as I did - it just wasn't there in terms of excitement around the new gear.

We started as we usually do at the Pearl booth - and the first thing I looked at was the new E-Pro Live electonic kit that is their center stage this year.  I'm not going to detail it here - I'm going to write a seperate mini-preview on these later this weekend.  I can't quite bring myself to call it a review because while there is some neat stuff surrounding this e-kit I honestly don't feel it's fair to Pearl to spring a mini-review on them that is on a product I don't feel is "complete".  More on it later but here are some photo's to check out. 

From there we hit the usualy round of suspects, DW, Sabian, Paiste, Ludwig, Taye, Gretsch, DDrum, Tama, Mapex, Roland and Yamaha.

Nothing really stood out of the crowd in any of these with the exception of  Mapex and their new lines of low-end kits and, what impressed me even more, the new kick pedals. 

Mapex's Voyager and Horizon kits are nice looking low end kits that look to be of good quality and features for the money.  The new Falcon pedals on the other hand are, to me extremely impressive - sporting features that put these pedals in direct competetion with Pearl's Eliminator's and Tama's Iron Cobra's.  I actually liked the feel of these pedals quite a bit and I am REALLY hoping I can talk them into getting me a pair to review this year.

Cymbal wise I was really impressed with the sound coming off of Sabian's new Artisian crashes.  Very clean and crisp sounding crashes - some I may have to look at adding to my own arsenal...

Zildjian popped out with the new Z3 series - I wasn't extremely impressed with the sound off of any one given cymbal - they sounded decent enough however nothing popped out at me.  Along with that there were a slew of new K series cymbals and effects cymbals along with some very cheap sounding ZHT's.

The last thing I'll mention in today's blurb goes back to Pearl's E-Pro - after seeing that I needed to hit the other major players in this space - those being Roland and Yamaha - I took a round on the TD9 from Roland and the new DTX series e-kit from Yamaha - and you bet I will be making some direct comparisons in the E-Pro preview coming up in the next day or so.  I want to get a little more time with each before I write this is up as I really want to be as fair as possible to Pearl as this is a new"ish" space for them and a bold step.

So that's it for today - we'll be hitting the show floor bright and early tomorrow and hitting the little guys and revisiting some things as we have time and doing whatever else we can to fill your eyes with drum goodness. 

A few more random pics here, and more in the forum post.  Pic count today is around 400.  Off to see Volto!

Dom!

Jason! 

Gretsch!

And I'll upload more to the forum post later tonight!!!