Back at E3 ’08, Harmonix announced an exclusive deal with the worldwide known peripheral maker Mad Catz to release an interesting range of officially licensed Rock Band 2 products. As far as everyone was concerned, seeing a nice replica of a Fender Precision Bass and a cool microphone/controller was interesting. But the announcement of cymbal expansion for the Rock Band 2 wireless drums, as an alternative to the ION Drum Kit, made everyone (me included) very excited. Here we are a couple of months later testing the Double Expansion Kit and we came up very surprised.

Is the ION Drum Kit too expensive? Do you want to pimp out your cool Rock Band 2 wireless drums and expand your experience? Is it worth it? Find out in our review.




Every piece of hardware on the kit is high-quality from the plastic clips that will be used to mount your cymbals to the rods where the cymbals will be on. Speaking of the cymbals, each of them has a triangle area where you need to hit, either slightly or harder, in order to get the desired effect. Crash, Ride and Hi-Hat effects will be available to you depending on where you plug your cymbal jack at the back of the drum set. The kit comes with three interchangeable coloured rings (blue, yellow and green) so you can effectively locate the correct cymbal. Cymbals are velocity sensitive which means no matter how hard or smooth your hit them, the responsiveness in-game will be accurate. Since it’s a double cymbal kit, you will have to set up depending on the effect you really want since you can install up to three cymbals. Using the drum trainer mode in Rock Band 2 is going to be your tuning tool as it will give you an excellent overview of how the cymbals respond while you play.

Installation was quick and easy so you won’t have any troubles getting your cymbals working. You basically get a two piece plastic clamp that you use to secure the rod that will hold the cymbal to the rest of the drum set. The clamp snaps together in two places and then you have little bolts you use to tighten everything down securely. Although the final set-up makes the cymbal and its respective rod go a bit wabbly, it won’t affect your gameplay whatsoever. The other little issue that we found out about it is that if you’re planning to add a third cymbal to your set-up, you would have to go for the three cymbal kit first instead of the dual since each kit has special brackets as you won’t be able to add an individual cymbal after you’ve installed the double cymbal kit. That’s unless you find a way to un-clamp the brackets…




Pricing for the double cymbal kit is set at 30$ (single cymbal 20$ and the triple 40$) and no matter how often you play with Rock Band 2 and what your friends say, expanding your drumming experience is worth it, especially if buying the ION Drum Kit isn’t in your plans.
Also, the cymbals are compatible whether you have a Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii Rock Band 2 drum kit. Very nice!

Conclusion

Do you really need Cymbals? I will say this: in order to experience the whole thing, you can’t go by it. Once you installed them on your kit, you won’t turn your back on them. Whatever you’re a drummer or not, expanding your Rock Band 2 experience for 30$ will be totally worth it.

Verdict: A must for every Rock Band 2 drum player


Pros

- Great price
- High quality, responsive and sturdy cymbals
- Velocity sentitive
- Compatible with XB360, PS3 and Wii Rock Band 2 drums

Cons

- Rods are a bit wabbly