Alesis Nitro Max e-Drum Kit: Premium Feel in a Compact Kit

04 Oct 2023 by Rob Puricelli |

4,5 / 5,0 | Approximate reading time: 3 Minutes

Alesis Nitro Max · Source: Alesis

Alesis Nitro Max Drum Module · Source: Alesis

Alesis Nitro Max · Source: Alesis

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Alesis seems to deliver e-Drum kits that keenly balance quality and budget and the new Nitro Max kit, with its mesh heads, is no exception!

Alesis has been in the e-Drum game now for many years. During that time, they have built quite a reputation for delivering great quality kits at truly affordable prices. The new Alesis Nitro Max Kit continues that trend with a blend of great feel, compact size and loads of great features for all players.

What you Get

The kit comprises a basic 4″ diameter aluminium tubular rack. Bolted on this are a large 10″ dual-zone snare, three single-zone 8″ tom pads, two cymbals a hi-hat pad and the drum brain. The cymbals are all 10″, with the crash having a chokeable rim. All three are mounted on their own boom arms to suit your position and style.

On the floor, we have a hi-hat controller and kick drum tower with pedal. It’s nice to see pedals included as standard these days as they were so often left out in the past. One thing I’m not able to determine is if the hi-hat pedal is simply ‘on/off’ or whether it transmits continuous data. The latter is much more preferable as it allows for expressive variation in the hi-hat. I’m also not particularly keen on the hi-hat pad position. An extra tube or even a longer one would give you more positioning options.

All that said, if you’re looking for a practice kit that is easy to set up, pack away and move around, the size and weight of this kit is a big plus.

The big plus here are the mesh heads. Alesis heads have always been very nice to play and give you a far more natural feel than other head compositions. The cymbals seem pretty standard affairs and don’t appear to have more than a single zone, so no fancy rim or bell work here. However, the crash does have a choke, which is nice.

Insane In The e-Drum Brain

An e-Drum kit can succeed or fail on its drum brain and the Nitro Max unit is simple yet functional. I’m never a fan of the built in sounds that Alesis provide, preferring to hook up to a laptop running some drum software. It seems Alesis have woken up to this and the Nitro Max kit comes with BFD Player. This ‘lite’ version of BFD gives you 440 sampled drums across 32 preset kits. Users can also build and store up to 16 kits of their own. To use BFD Player, you will need to hook your Nitro Max up to a Mac or PC.

Alesis Nitro Max Drum Module

One great feature of the Nitro Max brain is the device tray at the rear. This allows you to safely stand your phone or tablet during play. There are some increasingly good drum apps available that you can hook up to the Nitro Max. Alesis also provide you with taster packs of Drumeo and Melodics tuition programs. There’s also Bluetooth connectivity so you can jam along with your favourite songs.

All in all, the Alesis Nitro Max kit gives you some great features at a superb price point. It’s a great kit for advanced beginners or just simply something to practice on at home.