Roland TD-17KVX2 Drum Kit

The Roland TD-17KVX2 is the second generation of this drum kit and is an excellent update to the TD-17KVX. Roland hasn’t changed much here but the updates are pretty nice and include two of Roland’s new thin cymbal pads. Let’s take a look at this kit and what has changed.

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Drum Pads & Cymbal Pads

The pads on this kit are on the smaller side, but they are packed with some good features. They are some of the more no-frills pads that Roland offers but they play well. The snare and the hi-hat are probably the standout pads on this kit. The cymbals have received an upgrade from generation 1 as well. Let’s take a look at the pad lineup.

Multi-Zone Drum Pads

The snare pad is a really nice pad to play.The snare pad is a dual trigger PDX-12 mesh pad – 12 inches in diameter. So it’s two inches smaller than a traditional snare size. The head and the rim can both generate different sounds. The head is a two-ply mesh head, which can be adjusted to have more or less rebound like a normal drum head – so you can dial it in to your preference. Play-wise, it feels really good during play and the response around the surface of the head is pretty even.

Roland PDX-12 Snare Pad Top
Roland PDX-12 Snare Pad Bottom

The tom pads are pretty standard dual-zone mesh pads. All three toms are the PDX-8 pads from Roland. These pads offer an 8-inch diameter pads surface and a 10 inch rim diameter. The response of the heads feels really good during play, much like the head of the snare. However, there is a white plastic rim inside of the out rim, which can get in the way during play. It also makes the hit zone on the pads a little smaller. It’s kind of strange and awkward sometimes during play but the pads feel so good that it’s not really an issue. The outer rim is what triggers the second zone on the pad when hit. You can assign cymbal sounds to the rims of the toms to expand the size of your kits without adding more cymbal pads.

Roland PDX-8 Pad

Multi-Zone Cymbal Pads

The second generation of this kit has received some cymbal upgrades, which are very welcome. The new cymbal pads are of the thinner design that Roland is rolling out and they feel even closer to playing acoustic cymbals. The cymbals are visually more thin, which helps this kit look a little more sleek than before.

The ride cymbal has been upgraded to a 14-inch thin cymbal pad. The CY-14R-T pad is slightly bigger than the ride included with the previous version and it is even more sensitive and responsive. Overall it’s more fun to play and feels more dynamic. The pad can be played on the bow, edge and bell, and has an even playing surface with no real hot spots to worry about. This pad also has a choke feature built in, like most cymbals do these days.

Roland CY-14R-T Cymbal Pad
Roland CY-14R-T Cymbal Pad Bottom

The crash cymbals have been upgraded to dual zone thin cymbal pads. The CY-12C-T pad is designed specifically for use as a crash pad. These are the same size in diameter as the previous generation, but are the new thinner design. The new thinner pads feel close to acoustic cymbals and bend, give and sway more like one. Functionally they are the same as the previous versions with zones on the edge and bow and with choke features built in.

Roland CY-12C-T Thin Cymbal Pad Top
Roland CY-12C-T Thin Cymbal Pad Bottom

The 12-inch hi-hat pad mounts on a standard hi-hat stand and plays great. The VH-10 hi-hat pad is common on a lot of the mid-range Roland kits, and for good reason. It’s affordable and it offers nice flexibility in play. You can generate sounds from the edge and bow. The pad can generate all the sounds in between closed to open. You can also generate foot splash sounds like an acoustic hi-hat. There’s even a choke control on this pad. The fact that it mounts on a hi-hat stand makes the foot action feel much better than the electronic foot pedals that come with cheaper kits.

Roland VH-10 Hi-hat Pad
Roland VH-10 Hi-hat Pad on Stand

The kick tower gets the job done but it is pretty basic. It has a good feel when striking the surface. It feels somewhere in between a practice pad and a real kick drum head in terms of how much it gives during striking. There is no way to adjust the tension or anything like that. The pad has spurs to help keep it from sliding when used on a thick, heavy rug or carpet.

Roland KD-10 Kick Tower Back Pedal

Double Kick?

The kick pad is just barely big enough to fit a double kick pedal, but it does work. Most pedals should fit. The responsiveness of the pad is good enough for double kick players as well.

Feel & Playability

Even though it’s compact in size and uses mostly low to mid-tier Roland pads, this kit plays very well. The feel of the pads is the best quality, even though the pads are smaller in size.

The snare pad plays great and drummers with high demands from their snare pads should find it to be satisfying. Of course there’s better options out there, but at it’s price point it’s hard to beat the feel of the PDX-12 snare.\

The multi-zone pads around the kit give you a lot of sound flexibility, which can make playing this kit very satisfying. You can assign cymbals to the tom rims to expand the range of cymbals on your kit with no extra pads. You can get really good head and rimshot sounds from the snare. The ride has nice edge, bow and bell sounds for a realistic sound. Overall, the multi-zone pads are a huge plus for this kit over it’s cheaper competitors.

The hi-hat pad is another huge plus on this kit. Being able to mount it on a hi-hat stand makes it feel much more like an acoustic kit in terms of how it plays. The response from the various uses of the pad is natural enough that you can play it like an acoustic hi-hat.

Adding More Pads

There are two additional trigger inputs, one labeled “Crash2” and one labeled “Aux”. Both can be used to add additional pads to the kit.

The Rack

This kit uses one of Roland’s more compact racks – it’s workable but limiting. The rack that is currently included with this kit appears to be the MDS-Compact rack. It’s a peculiar rack in that it doesn’t offer a ton of flexibility in how to set up the pads. There’s also no true boom arms on the cymbal arms, but it seems to work out ok for setup. The pad mounts, while a little limited in terms of overall positioning, are all designed to rotate and tilt – so that’s a good thing.

Roland MDS Compact Rack
It should be noted that there are some images and videos out there that show this kit with a different version of the rack. Sometimes you will see the MDS-4KVX rack on this kit. This is the version of the rack with the boom arms for the cymbals. If the exact rack is important to you, we’d recommend contacting the vendor before buying to ask them which version of the rack appears to be on the kits they have in stock.

Sturdiness

The MDS-Compact rack is actually quite sturdy for a small, lightweight rack. It sits in place nicely while you are playing across all the pads on the kit, and there’s no excessive or annoying wobble. It helps to have the hi-hat and the kick pad mounted independently from rack, which keeps it balanced.

The TD-17 Sound Module

Roland has designed the TD-17 module specifically for this line of drum kits. Roland will tell you that it’s a stripped down version of the TD-50 module. But that might not mean much to drummers who have never used the TD-50 module. Overall the TD-17 module is pretty nice. It’s designed more with practicing in mind, but is good enough to be used for live performances if called upon.

This module has a total of 100 drum kits, with 70 built-in preset kits and 30 custom user kit slots. The sounds are not the same as the TD-50 module, but there are 310 built in sounds and voices that are utilized throughout the preset kits. This module also allows you to load up to 100 of your own WAV samples via SD card.

The TD-17 Drum Module has received a 2.0 upgrade. The 2.0 upgrade adds 20 more drum kits, 10 of which were exclusive to the VAD306 drum kit exclusively and 10 that are new. There are 26 new samples added that can be used for custom drum kits. They also added more reverb and compression effects which are a nice addition to this module. There are also 11 new multi-effects for expanded sound design options. The TD-17 2.0 version can also integrate with the Roland Cloud to expand your module with new kits.

Interface

Like other Roland modules, this one is pretty easy to dive into and use without even reading the manual. Buttons do what you expect and the typical module options are all there. Let’s take a closer look.

On The Top:

Roland TD-17 Sound Module Top
  • Power Switch
  • Setup Button – Brings you into general configuration settings for the kit
  • Digital Display – Shows kit, instrument and other settings during use
  • Function Buttons – Correspond to options on the digital display
  • Exit/Enter/Arrows/Dial – Used to navigate menus and select options
  • Record/Play/Stop buttons – Used for song mode to record your performances
  • Click Button – Enter click mode and settings
  • Coach Button – Enter coach mode and training features
  • Song Button – Enter Song mode and play along with songs
  • Ambience Knob – Adjusts kit ambience
  • Bass/Treble Knobs – Quick adjust instrument or kit EQ
  • Volume Knob – Master volume level of the module
  • Pad Select – manually select a pad or hit a pad to select
  • Assign Button – assign a new voice to the pad
  • Level Button – change level for selected voice
  • User Sample – load a user sample to selected pad (from SD card)
  • Tuning – Tune the selected pad voice up or down in pitch
  • Muffling – Add or remove muffling from selected pad or voice
  • Other – Select deeper pad settings

On The Back:

Roland TD-17 Sound Module Back
  • DC In Jack for Power Supply
  • Headphone Jack – 1/8″
  • Master Outputs – Stereo 1/4″
  • Mix In Jack – 1/8″
  • (2) Trigger In – For additional pads
  • MIDI Out

On The Side:

Roland TD-17 Sound Module Side
  • SD Card Slot
  • USB Computer Port

On The Bottom:

  • Cable snake connection which includes cable connectors for all pads included with the kit.

Setup & Configuration

This module has a single button for Setup. Entering setup mode allows you to adjust all of the typical configuration options you’d expect to find on a drum module. From here you can do things like:

  • Select a different type of hi-hat pad (if you upgrade from the included VH-10 pad)
  • Adjust how the Bass/Treble knobs control frequency ranges
  • Edit pad settings such as setting the type of pad used for each instrument and pad sensitivity
  • Backup/load the module data to/from an SD card – includes module settings and custom kits
  • Edit MIDI settings
  • Enable auto-off which automatically turns off the module after a period of inactivity
  • Adjust display contrast
  • Display the system info
  • Do a factory reset to bring the module back to factory defaults

Selecting a Kit

To select a kit, simply press the Kit button and start turning the dial to choose the kit you want to play. Easy enough.

Saving a Custom Kit

If you start to modify the sounds of a kit, or load in new samples to replace sounds on a kit, you can save the new kit to one of 30 user slots. The kit saves all the sounds and effects settings along with it.

Tweaking Sounds

This module doesn’t have a ton of sound design options like more expensive modules, but it does allow you to tweak the sounds quite a bit to get things to your liking.

Individual voices and instruments can be changed by adjusting the Volume, Panning, EQ, Tuning and Muffling.

You can create space and ambience through the kit by adjusting the Ambience settings, which are more or less advanced reverb settings. Rather than just changing basic reverb parameters, you can select options such as room size, room type, wall materials and more. Pretty slick.

You can assign one or more of the internal multi-effects to the kit. Once multi-effects are assigned, you can adjust how much effect is on each of the pads around the kit.

You can assign pads to specific MIDI notes – this is useful if you are using this drum kit as a controller for sounds on a computer.

PureAcoustic Ambience Technology

We have to mention this specifically, since it’s unique to Roland sound modules. This basically is just Roland’s way of letting you adjust the ambience around your kits. Many of the settings available for kit modification involve adjusting room and overhead mic placement and room type/size. This is Roland’s way of putting a name on that.

Playing Along With Songs

This module includes built-in songs if you just want to plug and play. Most drummer will want to play along with songs they like though.

To play along with the built-in songs, you can simply enter song mode, choose a song and start playing.

To play along with your own songs, use the Mix-In input or the Bluetooth option to connect a device like a smartphone or tablet. Once the device is connected, you can play the audio through the main mix on the module. You can then adjust volumes of the music or the kit independently.

Recording Songs

This module allows you to record your performances in different ways.

You can record your performances along with songs while playing along with built-in songs or songs that are saved to the SD card. The module allows to record up to 60 minutes total if you have an SD card, or about 3 minutes if you are using internal memory.

You can record along with aux input by playing audio through the Mix-In or Bluetooth inputs while recording. This records both the input signal and your playing along with it.

You can output MIDI or audio from the module to a computer via USB. If you use these options, you can record the MIDI tracks or the audio tracks giving you some flexibility for post-production.

Overall, it’s nice to have a few recording options like this. They are somewhat basic recording features but they are useful. If you don’t have a recording setup at home but want to be able to hear and analyze your playback, the built-in features will be just enough to get you by.

Practice Modes & Coaching

This module contains plenty of practicing and coaching options, so it can be very good module for drummers in training. Let’s take a quick look at the various practice features.

Time Check mode allows you to see on the screen how well you are playing in time with a click track. There are visual meters what will show you if you are in-time, early or late with your strokes.

Quiet Count mode will play a click track – and then while you are playing, the click track will drop out for a short period of time. This helps you to learn how to develop your internal sense of timing.

Warm Up mode takes you through some exercises that include changing up rhythms while you play, gradually raising/lowering tempo while you play and then a time-check to see how your timing is stacking up.

Create Songs with Guide Tracks to help you learn how to stay in time while practicing with songs. A guide track is basically a separate audio file that is an isolated click track. So you can basically load a song as a WAV file, a click track as a WAV file, and then play along with them together to practice.

Drum Kits and Sound Demo

This video from DrumtechTV does a great job of showing off how this drum kit sounds. They run through all the included kits and show how the various pads respond.

Setup & Assembly

As with most Roland kits, the instruction are pretty good for this one. They don’t really leave anything to the imagination. If you’ve ever assembled an electronic drum kit, you will find a lot of the setup to be pretty self-explanatory.

The included cable snake keeps it’s cables at just the right length to keep everything clean looking once it’s setup. The cables are just long enough to reach each pad, so you might find it tricky to move the pads around to non-conventional locations. For that reason, we recommend to setup this kit in it’s conventional configuration.

You’re looking at about 1 hour to get this one unboxed and setup.

What’s Included?

What all do you get in the box when you purchase this kit?

  • The rack and mounting hardware
  • Snare Pad
  • (3) Tom Pads
  • Kick Tower Pad
  • Ride Pad
  • Hi-hat Pad
  • (2) Crash Pads
  • Cable Snake
  • Power Supply
  • TD-17 Module
  • Drum Key
  • Manuals

What’s Not?

Here’s what you will also need to get that isn’t included with this kit:

Warranty

Roland offers a standard 1 year warranty for parts and 90 days for labor. This is meant to cover any issues with defects in manufacturing or assembly. It’s enough to cover you if you have any short term issues. Roland has a good reputation for quality products so I wouldn’t be too worried about not having a long term warranty for their drum kits.

Pros

  • Good sound module for the price level
  • Multi-zone pads all the way around the kit
  • Uses Roland’s new thin cymbal pads for crash and ride
  • Compact rack that can be folded and moved easily
  • Mesh heads have a great feel and response during play

Cons

  • The overall size of the pads is small, especially the 8 inch toms
  • The inner rim on the tom pads can be annoying when playing
  • The rack doesn’t have boom arms for the cymbals
  • The rack is somewhat limiting overall in how pads can be physically located

Overall Rating

4.0 out of 5.0 stars

Drum Module

3.5 out of 5.0 stars

Pads

4.0 out of 5.0 stars

Playability

4.0 out of 5.0 stars

Sturdiness

3.5 out of 5.0 stars

Expandability

3.0 out of 5.0 stars

Value

3.5 out of 5.0 stars

The Verdict

With the second generation the Roland TD-17KVX2 is a pretty solid kit and it got even better when compared to the previous version. The new thinner cymbals are a really nice to play and the sound module upgrades add useful features and sounds. The kit is still very compact and some drummers might not like the smaller size of the pads around the kit for the price this kit will cost. But what is here is very high quality and if you want slightly smaller pads with high play-ability this is an ideal kit for you.

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