Traps are a relatively new name in the drum business but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any heritage. You may well have seen the Traps kits around and noticed that they pass a striking resemblance with another ‘Flat’ kit. There’s no disputing this as non other than Bob Henrit and Nigel Robinson are behind the Traps project. They were (up until 2004) involved in the Arbiter Flats project before the change of ownership of Flats Drums when they left feeling they had more they could do. A company called Alchemy runs the Traps project and it is entirely separate from Flats and is involved in various design and manufacturing projects in many areas, not just music.

However, back to the Flats and the Traps kits which, although they may look similar, actually work on totally different principals. The Arbiter flats kit uses the Arbiter AT auto tuning mechanism, which although it works most of the time, and for most situations, does not allow drummers to do their usual tuning ‘tricks’ such as detuning one lug to get a particular sound, as it relies on the Arbiter ‘one tuning bolt’ system to tension the entire head. Enter the Traps kit which uses traditional rims and tuning bolts and so is instantly much more traditional- drummer- friendly.


However, we are not here to talk about the Traps acoustic kit (which is reviewed here), but at its newest incarnation, the Traps E400 electronic drum kit. It’s best to look at the photos for a general idea of how it looks and then I will fill in the missing information (hopefully). The heads are mesh and rest on a shallow ABS (riot shield plastic) shell. The heads are held on with traditional steel hoops and the tuning bolts are standard drum keys. The kit comes with a 20” kick, 12” snare, 10, 12 and 14” toms, two 12” cymbals and 12” hi hats. The rack (which uses standard 1.5” diameter pipes) is included as are the bass drum pedal, the double braced hi hat stand, snare basket (which mounts off the rack), two boom arms for the cymbals, the E408 brain, cables, sticks and headphones. Basically all you need to get going.



E400 Snare Drum
It’s worth noting that the bass drum has steel hoops too (any of you out there who need new hoops for your Tama and Ludwig 20” floor toms can get spares from Traps if needed), connects directly to the rack for ease of positioning, and is also the only drum on the set that has two heads – in effect, it’s a 2 inch deep bass drum, with a small foam kick pad in the beater position. On the subject of heads, each drum (pad?) apart from the bass drum actually has two mesh heads, both on top of each other. They rest front to front and in effect make the mesh twin ply, without treading on anyone’s patent. This gives the head a little more resilience and feels a bit firmer while still being almost silent but is does mean that the rim are a little higher than normal.

Each drum has a little arm that swings out across the head, and it’s this that picks up the head vibration and sends the signal to the brain. The underside of the arm has a little sprung plastic hemisphere that rests against the mesh and presumably also touches a piezo pickup inside the arm. There is a mini jack socket on the arm where the cable goes, and each arm mounts onto a steel rod which mounts on to the ABS shell in one of two locations, so you can move the arm if it gets in your way.

The snare drum is slightly different in that the hemisphere is rigid in the arm. There is also a rim pickup on this drum and come summer of 2006, there will be feature on the snare that will allow you to switch between the ‘snares on’ sound and the ‘snares off’ sound. In effect being a virtual snare release. This will still use the same stereo mini jack as presently used.




E400 Cymbals
The cymbal pads are polypropylene and 14” diameter. They have a foam rubber striking area, a blue trigger area and interesting ‘air grill’ mouldings on the rear side. I was curious about these, but apparently they are only to break up the vibrations in the plastic and to stop multiple triggers. There is no choke area on these cymbals but I guess they will be on the future/higher models. The hi hat cymbal looks and feels very similar to a ‘real’ hi hat but actually only has one ‘cymbal’. A special switch box sits where the bottom hi hat would rest which has a switch on its top surface. A metal tube rests over the pull rod and when you put your foot on the hi hat pedal, the clutch which has the ‘cymbal’ in it, pushes down on the tube, which pushes the switch, which triggers the closed hi hat sound. It sounds pretty Heath Robinson, but it actually works rather well.

So, all these pads connect to the A408 brain, which is the only bit I haven’t talked about yet. The brain is a little bigger than an A4 page and is black, flat and about 3cm thick. The pads connect into the back, with more mini jacks, and here we find another input labelled ‘Add On’. This is for another pad should you wish to add on, and can be another cymbal, bass drum or tom or even one of the new 8” tom pads which will be out any day now (April 2006). There is also an audio in for a CD or MP3 player, a PA out for connecting to an amplifier, a MIDI out for connecting to a computer or other MIDI device and a headphone out for using with the supplied headphones or any others you might have sitting around.




E400 Brain
The top surface of the brain has two large knobs, one for headphone volume and one for audio in volume and four blue buttons. The two on the left move you through the 8 preset kits (there is an LED to show which kit you are on), and the two on the right move you through the four variations of the 8 presets. Using these four buttons you have access to the 32 internal kits. The 8 presets are labelled ‘A400’ (samples of an acoustic A400 kit), then Rock, Jazz, SFX, Techno, Doom, Ethno and Orchestral. I would possible argue with the names as the Techno kit doesn’t sound like I would expect it to, the Jazz kit sounds like a Rock kit etc etc but I am sure that most E400 buyers would just be pleased that they have got so many sounds. As it is so simple, there is no editing of sounds, but there is a MIDI out socket if you REALLY want to hear something different.

The kit variations are labelled up as Standard, Alternate 1, Alternate 2 and Loops. The Standard setting is the basic samples, the Alternate variations have different amounts of reverb on them and interestingly, Loops triggers style related loops when the first pad is hit. For instance, if you hit the crash pad, the loop will start. You can then play the rest of the kit as normal. However, when you next hit the crash pad, the next loop in the ion will be triggered. You can’t stop the loops except by moving to another kit, but it’s a good musical trainer, and it helps you to hit the pads accurately so it doesn’t sound like there is a glitch in the music. It sounds more complicated than it is, but as long as you remember that the first pad you hit will be your start/stop, you will be fine.

The loops themselves are all related to the kit they are assigned to. In other words, the Rock kit triggers distorted guitar loops, the Jazz kit triggers slow blues loops that if triggered correctly can play a 12 bar, the Ethno triggers salsa loops, the Orchestral kit triggers a Bolero style loop etc.

As for the sounds themselves, they aren’t going to win any prizes for ultra realism, but that’s not the point. They are generally quite short and a little noisy, but are 16 bit
44.1 kHz (with an 18 bit output converter) after all, and they do sound like real drums and cymbals. Unfortunately, apart from the A400 samples, Bob wouldn’t tell me what kits they were actually sampled from all he would say was that they are all from his (rather large) drum collection.

Two things I was surprised about were the lack of a click or metronome and (less importantly on a entry level kit) no MIDI in to allow a computer or other midi device to trigger the sounds. However, I am sure that these points will be addressed on future kits.



As for actually playing the kit, it doesn’t take much to get used to it, as long as you have used mesh heads before and realise that they are more bouncy than the ‘real thing’. The triggering was great, I couldn’t get it to miss trigger at all, and flam triggering (usually an area some kits have a problem with) was superb. The triggering response times were fine, although they didn’t feel as immediate as some other (much more expensive) kits. Bob reckons it’s about 5ms and as I didn’t have my laptop there to test it, but that sounds about right, if a little optimistic. However, as this kit is more aimed at education and entry-level drummers, you can completely ignore the last two sentences! The only area of triggering that I found slightly difficult to work was the rim shot facility on the snare drum pad. I gather that there is a ‘sweet spot’ but I couldn’t get it to work as cleanly as I would have like, but this may all change when the snare release button is added, so watch this space.

I have tried the Traps kit now on a few occasions, and up until the last time, I was concerned about drum positioning. The drums mount onto hex arms, but not in the normal way. Usually the hex arm would either come upwards, parallel to the shell like the Remo hex arm, or would go into the shell like the Yamaha hex arm. The Traps are different in that the arm goes into the holder, parallel to the head, and round the shell so you mount the pads by sliding them side ways onto the arm. There is a toothed gripper inside the pad holder that grips the arm very strongly (I had no problem with slippage), but it doesn’t seem to be a very flexible mounting system. The cross bar of the rack is only just long enough for the two rack toms and you can only have the toms in two positions – far back and far forward. However, this last time when I actually had some time with the kit for this review, I actually got all the drums in the right position for me. It might not be flexible, but at least it’s all possible. On the subject of all these little parts and holders, Traps are very keen to promote the fact that all parts are replaceable, should the worst happen (unlikely) or if you want to add on other bits and pieces or build a custom kit, you can. The choice is yours.

Now, I’ve already said that this kit is not aimed at the serious Pro drummer, and I think Traps have got this kit aimed just about right. The price is good, it plays well and the sounds, although nothing to write home about, are different enough to give it an identity. I can see this selling well to schools, although I think it will also be well represented in bedroom around the world too. It’s not perfect, but then, if it were, there would be nowhere else to go. As an easily transportable electronic kit, it scores highly, if you can do without the gloss of the electronic ‘big boys’ (which lets face it is not going to trouble most drummers under 17 anyway), then it’s a good buy. The E400 kit retails at £499 but you can find it for quite a bit less than that if you look around.

John Williams
June 2006