OK, they arrived today and I put them together, somewhat tentatively.
First impressions? They really are the absolute minimum needed to get the job done. They are adequate, but just barely. They are the cheapest way to get (mostly) velocity-sensitive MIDI drum input into the computer using a kit-like physical layout. The "toylike" criticism when compared to more expensive sets is not unfair. They don't seem to be a great per-dollar value compared to their apparently minuscule production cost, but there's no way of getting the mission accomplished for less money, and that may be the bottom line for many. The MSRP on these is outrageously inflated. The typical $275 street price is about the maximum this set could ever plausibly sell for. I don't know if I am going to get the two-pad extension set as it seems the "discount" price of $50 for two of these pads and their hardware is still about twice what the pads look to be worth.
The kit is very small, seemingly fragile and will take some care in use and setup to be solid enough. I think that once the layout and positioning is settled, reinstalling all the clamps with a very little touch of silicone glue in the mating surfaces will make them grip a great deal better without risking overtightening and breaking the plastic fittings. Rubber-like silicone glue is non-hardening, so if you don't go crazy with the quantities, you can undo your work later.
The pads are indeed jarringly hard, even for limited use. I think I'm going to see if I can find a truck inner tube and cut some pad overlays to tack on with with the abovementioned silicone glue and see if that will improve the feel without damping the responsiveness of the piezos.
The most disconcerting discovery was that the pedals (such as they are, and they aren't much) do not appear to be velocity-sensitive. They definitely are not when run through the two pedal inputs on the back of the control box (this set does not use a separate MIDI box after all, but an SR-16 type of head with pad inputs on the back). I do not know if these pedals have piezos inside or are mere switches, or if they can be safely input to the other pad jacks.
It appears that the default volume balancing of the samples in the control head is grossly out of whack, particularly with the full-on kick, but the selections seem to be fully 1-127 adjustable to suit. The default sample selections are pretty awful, but there are a great many others to choose from, so they may be better. I don't intend to use the control box in any recording capacity except a MIDI-through device, and the fiddling can be done in the drum program on the computer, with velocity-layered drum samples of my choice. I will probably get around to tweaking the native settings in the box just to use it for running the kit for practice work.
