KID'S COM    CYBER 
DRUM 
CENTER
  electronic toy drum kit with 30 nicely unusual rhythms   Happy People
This is a fairly big electronic toy drum kit with 8 drumpads and 30 partly unusual preset rhythm patterns.
This instrument stank badly toxic of phthalate (and solvents?); apparently the drum pads are made of plasticized soft PVC pseudo- rubber. The drum pads are designed to play with sticks and don't work well by hand; they are switchable between an acoustic and an electronic drum set, and additionally there are 4 plastic effect pad buttons those play each an effect sample. The preset rhythms are made from medium resolution samples and include also quite unusual tribal and rock rhythm patterns those sound partly nicely grungy and bizarre; they are selected by row and column buttons. Unfortunately some patterns include a fixed key bass line or accompaniment, which makes them less versatile; some accompaniments contain sampled e-guitar lines of fixed speed, those mess up the patterns in funny (but interesting) ways when tempo is changed. The samples sound nicely fat and grainy (unlike the thin and hissy My Music Center percussion), and drum pads and preset rhythms have each an individual analogue volume slider.

The box of the Cyber Drum Center shows the brand names "Kid's Com" and "Happy People"; regarding the name and the coloured transparent control panel design, it belongs likely to the same series like the Cyber Keyboard; also some percussion samples remind to it and the similar Kawasaki Pro37.

I don't own this instrument anymore but had the occasion to record sounds from it, because it was wrongly sent to me by a mail order shop instead of the ordered Kid's Com - Mix-Me DJ. I gave it back in exchange for this, thus some descriptions here may be wrong since I have partly written it from memory.

main features:

notes:

As usual with sound toys, the drum pads are not velocity sensitive. During each drum pad hit the green "HIT" lamp lights up, which causes a beep (key matrix noise) mixed into the drum pad sounds, which especially makes the short closed hihat sound almost inaudible. Generally there is some beeping static key matrix interference noise in the sound, especially when drum pad volume is set high. The drum pads don't respond well when played with fingers; especially the left upper pad of my tested specimen needed too much force (possibly a defect). The preset rhythms are selected by row and column buttons (indicated by 2 red LED rows); every column select button resets the selected row to the first, which disturbs life play tricks. Selecting a rhythm also always switches tempo back to default.

The 30 preset rhythm patterns are nicely unusual and include a lot of rock guitar and hiphop samples with typical human voice and record scratching noises. The rock patterns (e.g. "punk rock") contain grungy samples of heavy metal e-guitar lines, those keep their own speed also with changed rhythm tempo, which messes the patterns up in funny (but inspiring) ways. The "tango" pattern contains a cacophonic saxophone(?) bass line in a fixed key, which sound anarchic although it makes it little useful to accompany given melodies. Also some other patterns contain fixed- key accompaniments.

The drum pad sounds are medium resolution samples and partly contain a chorus effect, which phasing component varies every hit to make them sound less static. The "electronic drum kit" sounds are not really spectacular and rather resemble distorted acoustic ones with phasing; the cymbals and the 4 effect pad sounds stay the same anyway.

The concept of this instrument reminds to the Kawai GB-1 Session Trainer, although it lacks the sequencer and chord key changeability of the latter. Generally the Cyber Drum Center is not a bad thing, although it behaves a little stubborn, banal and unfortunately has no realtime programmable drum pattern, which would make it much more interesting. (I would wish something like the Yamaha PSS-260 custom drummer here.) Also the unacceptable acrid chemical odour of this toy was quite annoying; the age of toxic phthalate plasticizers should really be over now; polyurethane would do the job also.
 

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