Roland Intros SPD::ONE Electronic Drum Pad Line

Roland today introduced a new line of electronic drum pads, the SPD::ONE series.

The line includes four electronic drum pads:

  • Electro – offers 22 electronic drum sounds + you can load your own short samples
  • Kick – offers 22 kick and percussion sounds + you can load your own short samples
  • Percussion – offers realistic drum sounds + you can load your own short samples
  • Wav Pad – designed for triggering your custom samples, loops and backing tracks, lets you load up to 4GB of samples data or about 360 min of audio.

Here are the official video demos:

Each of the pads can run on battery power, offers USB connectivity for loading samples and USB-MIDI support, and includes an adapter that lets you clamp the pad to a hi-hat, cymbal, or tom stand, or even a mic stand.

Pricing and Availability

The SPD::ONE percussion pads are available to pre-order now, with a street price of about US $199 for the Electro, Kick & Percussion pads and $249 for the Wave pad. See the Roland site for details.

74 thoughts on “Roland Intros SPD::ONE Electronic Drum Pad Line”

    1. Just because a product doesn’t fit your needs doesn’t mean it’s a fail. This looks like a decent product for someone who wants a compact percussion/drum performance system.

      1. Agreed. Also – the prices are pretty good. The Wav pad looks especially good, with the 360 minutes of sample time. I could see using that in a lot of ways.

        What some people won’t get is that these are designed to be used live, so there’s nothing to connect or figure out – you just put it on a stand and plug it into your mixer – and they’re built so that you can literally beat on it for years. I wish Roland’s keyboards were built like this.

        1. I dunno, the Korg Wavedrum is a lot more impressive than these and it’s about the same price IIRC. (Too bad the Wavedrum is saddled with a terrible, two-digit LED for its UI.)

        2. I like the easy wav import and the text-based config doesn’t bother me at all. I love that it can go on the floor and be triggered with your foot, which would be great for acoustic artists wanting to add a backbeat or tambourine by tapping their foot.

          12 patches for a sample playback engine is pretty lame if they’re selling it as a unit that will play entire click tracks. What band only has 12 songs?

          I get that it is supposed to be easy on stage but there should have been 12 banks of 12 or something like that. Maybe a double knob with a lower ring on the outside for banks. For those who don’t use the banks would ignore the outside ring.

          For $375 I guess you’re paying for the sturdy case and pad more than functionality. If I ever see one used for $150 I’d consider it although pedal-based loop players are available.

  3. I remember seeing bonobo live in SF and during an intermission, he came back out and did a solo drum set on the larger Roland pad, maybe the octapad I think. It was amazing to watch live because he must have had a foot controller to change the kit or something but it wasn’t just 8 sounds for sure. So someone will be digging on these.

    1. For a lot of drummers, these will be better than other existing options, like full electronic drum kits or Octopads.

      The benefit of all-in-one pads like these is that you can put where you actually want to play them, and because if one goes out you’re not f***ed, unlike an Octopad or electronic drum kit. .

    2. Really?? Have you priced out a V-drum kit? How do you define “bang for buck” here? It’s always funny to see people comment on things they seem to have no use for but feel the need to comment anyways. This is for live players who don’t want to or need to have a full kit. Great idea on Roland’s part.

      1. “How do you define “bang for buck” here?”

        Easy, $200 for only one pad with 12 drum sounds ($250 if you want the one you can load your own samples into) Vs. all the other multipad drum options like the Alesis Sample Pads, the Yamaha DTX or even Rolands other drum pad offerings.

        1. By size, ease of use, and toughness, I’d have to agree with most people here that it is worth it. a lot of existing drum pad modules are huge, sometimes you only need one trigger pad, its that simple. so for an avid drummer these things are God-sends.

          1. The argument was “Bang for your Buck” and not size ergonomics. Even then for a single sample based drum pad these things are way overpriced when the more flexible multipad options are in the same price range. Also how can you argue how tough these are when you haven’t even tried them?

            Besides, how big is your Drum kit that you couldn’t somehow fit a Wavedrum or an Octapad in there?

            1. I have to agree these things are totally overprice compared what you can get for the same money. My initial reaction was ‘what a waste of money’. These will flop.

        2. Maybe alesis has improved the performance of their pads. Samplepad has a very unreliable os that locks up on sounds coming from the SD. It’s never happened to me with Roland gear. Not to mention the quality of the Roland samples vs. the inferior quality of alesis’. So, you’ll pay less for other products, but don’t expect they deliver like Roland.

          1. Seriously, the Alesis is probably more fun to play around with in your room, but I don’t really trust Alesis gear live. Except maybe an old MMT-8 🙂

  6. It’s a joke? For a $899 (first link on amazon) you can buy Roland HandSonic HPD-20 with all this sounds simultaneously! With sequencer and a lot of another options.

    1. You do realize it’s not meant to be played with sticks. The name gives it away. I had an HPD-20. Great sample based hand-drum but the sensors are not meant for the force from a drum stick unless you play lightly and the pads are a little small for sticks.

      1. Roland has other offerings with better prices than the hand drum that are still better alternatives to these little pads.

  7. Edit: The prices in the article are wrong. According to Sweetwater they are $199 each with the Wav one being $249. a bit more reasonable than the $300 in the article.

    Still a little expensive for what they are though. Also a pretty shallow move to price the one with custom samples more than the others, being that’s the most likely one that people are gonna buy. Like when they priced the Jupiter boutique module more than the others knowing that would be the most popular one.

  8. Couldn;t they have put all 4 into one big pad for about £350-400?… they seem way overpriced for what they are to be honest… I mean they look and sound great but price is quite high … I will wait till Beringer bring out there version!!

    1. Broomfondle

      They could put it all into a tiny plastic box with four pads and sell it for $100 – but these are clearly designed to stand up to stage use and to be used by drummers.

      If you’re worrying about paying $300 for a pro drum pad – these are not for you. Wavedrums are about $600, Octopads around $700 and neither of them are designed to be put on the floor and kicked for years.

      PS: Behringer has already been sued by Roland for cloning their guitar pedals and lost. Behringer had to change their designs to not rip-off Roland’s design. So now, the Berhringer pedals are not only made of cheap plastic and unreliable, but they’re ugly, too.

      1. Hmm, I’m pretty sure I paid about $300 for my Wavedrum (new).

        The head is kind of torn up on it, but to be fair, I used taiko bachi on it a little more than I should…

      2. ” Behringer has already been sued by Roland for cloning their guitar pedals and lost. ”

        Wrong, Roland and Behringer settled out of court and no one lost anything. Roland in fact did give explicit permission to make designs similar to their Boss pedals to Behringer. It was Roland USA that didn’t get the memo and pursued legal action. Berhinger decided to change the look while maintaining the internal designs to make everyone happy.

        1. Michael Hogue

          If you want to call Behringer’s paying off Roland, changing their designs and making the agreement confidential to avoid others suing them, too, ‘winning’, then more power to you.

          1. You seem to like to put words in peoples mouths. I never said “Winning”. I said “Settled”. When two parties Settle something it usually means the two parties came to some sort of mutual agreement. Behringer didn’t pay Roland anything, Again Rolands USA distributor sued, not Roland the actual company themselves who again gave Behringer permission to use their designs.

  9. For $300, the feature set is stupidly limited. 22 built-in samples, and (count ’em) ONE user sample of 5 seconds. If you described this product and asked me to guess the price, I’d have said $99.

    For $300, I’d expect to see one integrated product that has the built-in sounds and features of all 4 units. I’d expect to see a wi-fi enabled feature that lets you use an iOS or Android device to manage sounds and set up velocity switches. Oh yea, and every percussion unit like this should have velocity layering.

    In fact you could almost make up for the fact that there is only one pad by having a smart device to switch samples from pad palette.

    Ok, but that’s not what this product is.

    This streamlined feature set will fill a need, for sure.

    But a person could get a MIDI drum pad rig and use their iOS device and get a much more impressive percussion rig for about $100.

      1. Fair point. I actually hate the idea of using an iOS device on a gig, and will continue to resist.

        Also, it’s a fair point that this device just “isn’t for me.” I stand by my larger point that Roland could have given this device a little more muscle for that price tag.

  12. These prices justify to buy a (2nd hand) PD8, some knobs, an RPI and DIY something much more functional together. These should be $99 at most. Like the trend of many other large brands it about recycling and breaking down legacy stuff in to pieces . It;s all about maximizing monetization of every little resistor they have on hand , and thus breaking down every bit of functionality per item and repeat it in another box so consumers need to spend more for less and sucking every dollar cent out of them possible . Why not a standalone $59 pad with a $25 click on switchable or external sound adapter ? because it does not maximize selling hardware, this is all we stayed up for all night ?

  13. (for the wav pad) A self contained sample player that can be used by guitar/bass/keyboard/etc. players? Pedalboard friedly and can fit over the free space in a keyboard. I say this looks good for non-drummers

  14. You know what… Roland is just a troll company. And a good one at that, it’s a real talent to be able to frustrate and disapoint such a huge number of people products after products (lately at least to be kind)… let’s “redefine future” with a presset machine with no midi… that’s just perfect… It’s brillant, it’s pure Roland…

    1. I suppose no one buys Roland products either. Their ultra-secret business model works in reverse. The less they sell the better. Seriously though, I think they disappoint a lot of the posters here, even the ones who would never buy any of their gear but go out of their way to tell you how bad it is. Similar to “mansplaining”. Synthopia is full of synthsplainers. Always good for a laugh.

      1. I’d like to “synthsplain” my reason for dissing this product. I have more than the normal amount of experience with being seduced by product hype and being disappointed by products that fall short. There may be some less-experienced kids who come on who read the product releases and get very fired up. They might appreciate voices that come on saying, “Cool it down a little there, sport. It ain’t all that.”

        OTOH, I’m no hater. There are times when new products come out and I’m the first one to say, “That sounds amazing!” or “What a clever idea!”

        When a big company makes something that pushes the envelope of value, power and features, I’ll sing their praises.

        This do-nothing box is too expensive. Charge less or have it do more. Period.

    2. I don’t know… Who doesn’t bring out a few products you don’t want once in a while?

      Some recent Roland products are super exciting. In my opinion the System 8, for example, is SUPERB! The JC-40 as well. The Boutique synths sound awesome (i especially recommend the JX-03). BOSS (a Roland company) keep releasing great guitar pedals…

  17. (in response to Michael) Yeah, I know, I have two loopers. The ones with one pedal have to be hit twice to be stopped, a feat I cannot (my bad) accomplish with my feet and they are usually too stiff to be hit reliably with your fingers. Most of them cannot re-trigger samples and you cannot change the trigger status for each sample, as in this Roland product. And as far as I know loopers cannot “layer” sounds that weren’t recorded together previously as this does making it impossible to have a set of samples and then combine them in different ways without recording them again. Also (one pedal) loopers do not send click tracks separately as far as I know.
    On the other hand, this doesn’t fade out whereas both of my loopers can.
    Admittedly, the user interface is horrid but it can do more than a looper.

  18. The kick is perfect timing for me as I rework my setup to include the amazing wavedrum and a few loopers. I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to trigger kick synths, and while I have more percussion midi controllers than any sane person needs, if I want a minimalmsetup,I’d have to have a full set of pads or a dedicated midi controller.

    No, iPad, iPhone doesn’t work for midi as there’s wayyy too much latency. That’s why the wave drum kicks ass. No latency. I expect the kick to be just as nice in terms of responsiveness.

    1. When I’ve used wired MIDI, I didn’t notice any problematic latency. BT and WiFi MIDI would have too much latency, though.

      1. On my air 2 once I have a few effect in something like AUM, I have to set sample size so large like 1024 that latency is horrible. If I just use like one fx like ToneStack it’s ok.

  19. ¿only one sound at a time and no external program change or remote control for $300!!!!!?
    ¡Way too expensive!!! Lets compare the $179 Alesis SamplePad 4 to the $300 Roland SPD_ONE sampler:

    Alesis SamplePad4
    —————————-
    pads: 4
    expansion: 2
    Screen: bright LCD for editing and navigation.
    Internal memory: 25 sounds, 10 kits.
    memory expansión: SD Card 512 sounds, 89 kits.
    USB: MIDI I/O and data.
    DSP: tuning of samples and reverb.
    LOOPS: YES
    Click: NO
    AC Power Supply included: YES.
    Battery Power: NO

    Roland SPD-ONE sampler
    —————————-
    pads: 1
    expansion: NO
    Screen: NO
    Internal memory: 10, NO kits.
    memory expansión: NO
    USB: MIDI Out and data.
    DSP: reverb.
    LOOPS: YES.
    Click: YES
    AC Power Supply included: NO.
    Battery Power: YES.

    The SPD-ONE doesn’t looks like a good deal in any shape or form. You pay more and receive less.

    1. Marco NAILED it.

      It’s like someone at Roland proposed a powerhouse product and some higher-up said, “It’s good, but can we get rid of all the features, and raise the price?”

  21. Why would I pay $300 for *one* of these, when I can get a SPD-SX for $799? It has 9 pads, 2GB of sample space and a much more standard size and mounting.

  22. Why would I pay $300 for *one* of these, when I can get a SPD-SX for $799? It has 9 pads, 2GB of sample space and a much more standard size and mounting.

  24. I need a cheap set oh hand drum / trigger pads with velocity sensing, USB-MIDI out, to trigger all the NI-Kontakt & .WAV based samples I have.
    With a socket to accept a switch input for a bass / stomp pedal.

    I don’t need internal sounds, don’t need internal sample RAM, don’t want stick trigger pads, don’t want little finger pads.
    Want large HAND trigger pads.

    Cannot afford the expensive Roland – Handsonic or the Korg – Wavedrum.

    1. Since you want it to be cheap, you could consider a bit of a cobbled together system. People have made trigger rigs with an Arduino and a piezo. You could buy a trigger i/o kind of device, then plug in a pad you’ve made with a piezo in it. You can dial in the sensitivity and if that is not enough range, you could run in through a gain boost (like a preamp).

  25. great idea but a little too expensive for me vs. other options. You pay a premium for these for what you get. I will stick with my synth samples at that price or look for a used octapad.

  26. I play acoustic drums in a trio. Something like this could be very useful. One neat little thing that can be a cowbell, tambourine, wood block, big gated snare, tympani, gong…

    1. The octapad gives you much more sounds and the ability to play notes. I loved using it with my old band, but these wouldn’t be good for jam sessions, not enough options. Could work for a specific song though.

  29. Keith MacMillans drum pads from kickstarter should be out soon, looking quite good though not exactly the same and I cant remember the price exactly.

  30. These are sweet! For historical context, they appear to be a reboot of the DR-PAD line from the 80s. Many of the comments are bemoaning the fact that they’re not larger or more complex, but having used the originals, I can attest that this form factor is incredibly useful in a complex setup.

    For a synth/dj rig, two of these take up about as much space as a DJ mixer and can be squeezed into a crowded setup. For a drum kit, you can mount one and hide it next to a tom or hit hat without any major kit reorganization.

    The real time controls are great for performance. The narrow scope of each takes some of the cognitive load off using them live.

    Then there’s the durability. If they’re anything like the DR-PADs, you’ll be able to bang on them for decades.

    My only minor gripe is the lack of a 5-pin DIN for triggering external sources via MIDI without a computer in the mix.

    I can’t wait to get one of these!

    1. It is possible to reduce “cognitive load” but they could have kept things very simple and still had more built-in samples (with velocity switching), more memory for user sounds, and you could just avoid thinking about any features that don’t pertain to you.

    1. Absolutely true. However, you will need a way to convert audio signals into MIDI notes, and a sound module to produce the drum sounds.

      This box does combine those features in a tiny, seemingly rugged box. But it sucks stupid amounts of dollars from your balance.

  32. And no trigger out.to hook it up with something else like other stage products like Nord drums etc…, (and no MIDI din or MIDI 3.5mm jack as well) .whats up with all these colors. Do we need a Google drum ?

  34. Roland system 8 modular plug out rack thingy…. Boutique 101 or 202…wishful thinking boutique alpha Juno… everyone knows a boutique 808 will most likely be release on the 8th day of an august….

  35. Look elsewhere on this site and you see the Zoom MultiStomp MS-70CDR for $120. That is value. Frustratingly these have no sound modification controls outside pitch. The FX should be off and a few editing controls should be on.

  36. Could anyone point me in the right direction if I want to DIY the ONE:WAV pad? I’d mainly use it for the backing+clicktrack funtion.

  37. Just got the SPD One Kick. Bought it as part of a hybrid percussion kit. The unit itself is solid and the pad has a good feel & level of sensitivity but for an overpriced unit designed to be an electronic kick drum most of the sounds are utterly rubbish. It only has 5 kick sounds (with 2 variations), out of which I’ll probably only use 2. The rest are useless. Sidestick? Jingles?? Guiro??! Who the hell would want those sounds on an electronic kick pedal? And you can only import one sample of your own. It’s basically a drum machine with no sequencer and only one sound playable at a time, the main difference being the casing and large pad. Considering returning it and getting an Alesis SamplePad with a kick trigger instead.

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