Yamaha DD-75

USER BACKGROUND
I am a semi-pro player, who gigs regularly with a 5 piece Rock/Americana band at small to medium size venues - pubs, clubs, wine bars etc.
I currently gig with a Roland TD25 kit, so am familiar with the benefits and limitations of e-kits as a species. The Roland is a modest improvement over an acoustic kit in terms of stage footprint and physical volume of 'stuff', but it doesn't really offer any significant reduction, either in the number of cases I have to lug around, or in savings on set-up and strike time.

I decided I really wanted to see if I could pare the gear payload right down to a 'one trip from the car' package. Let's be honest, that is every gigging musicians' dream after all!?

PORTABILITY & STAGE FOOTPRINT
No doubt, in terms of portability and physical footprint 'on stage', Yamaha's DD75 does achieve these goals. The whole gig rig I use comprises 3 cases: A Gator mixer case which holds the DD75; A small wheeled Protection Racket case to hold the Yamaha kick and hi-hat pedals, drum stool, snare drum stand, sticks and cabling; A single Mackie Thump which is primarily a personal monitor, but which can also deliver to Front of House at smaller venues. Voila!! 3 cases in total, single trip goal achieved - van now for sale on Ebay!

FUNCTIONALITY & PERFORMANCE
In terms of the functionality and performance of the DD75 unit itself, I would say to Yamaha that there is a market out there for a 'Pro' version of this 'kit', which would allow more experienced drummers to better replicate the sound and feel of a 'real' kit.
Specifically:
1. SIZE: I think making the unit physically larger - even by 200mm in width and length - would make the act of playing far more pleasurable and less constricted, without compromising compactness. Sure, it's great discipline to play on such a compact unit, but it can feel a little like 'typing' a groove, rather than playing one.
2. VOICE LIBRARY: The inbuilt voice library contain way too many 'novelty' sounds that no serious drummer will ever use. This unit needs a greater range of 'real kit' samples, it is especially weak in the range of crash cymbals and snares.
3. USER CUSTOM KITS: The process of building 'User Custom Kits' is a little clunky, involving a 'save as' method, from a selected pre-programmed kit. Far better to allow users to start with a blank 'User template' and select individual voices for each pad. Also, the facility to duplicate one User Kit to another User location would help speed up the construction of a library of user kits, since many kit elements would be the same across that library.
4. MIXING PAD LEVELS: There is no facility to mix the levels of individual Pads - for me this is a big downside. The whole idea of e-drums is to enable a player to create a kit sound that is 'mixed down', with all voices at the correct relative level, but the DD75 does not cater for this. The result is that you end up with a kit mix in which crash cymbals are typically way too loud and hi-hat way too quiet.
5. OVERALL KIT EFFCTS: The DD75 does offer a good selection of kit effects (Room, Hall, Plate etc.) but does not allow the user to permanently save a specific effect to a User Kit. It returns to default effect each time the Kit is exited or the unit is powered off - a simple but valuable fix I?d have thought.
6. HI-HAT: The Hi-hat function only recognises fully open and fully closed sounds, regardless of which type of pedal you use. I appreciate the hi-hat is a hugely complicated thing to model and reproduce, but I would at least like to see a ?half-open? position recognised, to give the player that lovely hi-hat ?sizzle?.
7. PEDALS VS ?BUTTONS?: I would like to see a Pro version which bundles up the Yamaha Kick and Hi-Hat pedals (KU100 & HH65) which are currently only offered as extra cost options. I don?t know many serious players who would take a second look at the ?buttons? currently supplied with the Kit. My buttons are still in their bags... in the box... in the attic!

TO SUMMARISE
The DD75 is very impressive in many ways, and goes a long way to easing the drummer?s payload burden, as well as speeding up set-up and strike times. But I think there are many serious drummers out there looking for a downsizing alternative who would reach deeper into their pockets for a pro-version which offered the full user functionality of higher end e-kits.
Yamaha - if you build it, they will come?.

I bought it to learn how to play the drums on a budget, without having much space available and without making too much noise and it works great for me in that regard.
It also works as a midi controller with a DAW and a plugin that allows you to assign cc to certain sounds (Steven Slate Drums for example), I didn't try this feature though, so it might be a mess to setup, like every midi I own.
In terms of playability, the velocity is a bit weird and the 2 pedals need some time to get use to it but it's achievable. I'm not a good drummer and as a beginner it satisfies me but it can be a bit frustrating if you'd want everything to work like a real drum set would.

In conclusion, it's a possible first approach to playing the drums, but to decide if it is a good one or not is up to you and your preferences. BUT if you have space available I'd certainly chose a more "classic" electronic drum set as it would give a better approach to how it feels to play the drums. This really is more about learning rhythm, how to hold the sticks, how to move from the snare to the hats for example than learning how to play the drums.

I got this for some home practise during lockdown.
And as a simple set up, tear down unit.

I find the default sounds are so so, and the speaker pushes tom toms and hides the bass drum. For someone that on an acoustic kit pushes low end kick by kicking hard, this was the opposite of the experience I wanted.

When I plugged it into using MIDI, it was easy to make that happen, but I had some strange delay - this might not have been this product actually.

I also found the acoustic sound of the pads very loud.

I’m sure you can tweak the pad sensitivity in settings, get MIDI working, and use headphones, another speaker and get more bass drum. And i’ve seen people use this product live in cover gigs in smaller venues.

Specifically as an easy practise unit, at least for me, it didn’t quite work out.