If you love Roland’s top-of-the-line products but can’t see yourself spending ridiculous amounts of money, you should check out the Roland TD-27KV2. It’s the company’s mid-level flagship kit, offering most of what the top models have with a more slim and compact design.
In this review, we’re going to see how this kit compares and discuss whether it’s worth buying. It’s undoubtedly a top-quality kit, but is it one that you should get for yourself?
Let’s find out.
The two biggest features of this kit are the PD-140DS snare pad and the CY-18DR ride pad. This snare drum and ride are used in Roland’s most expensive drum sets, so it’s nice to see them here on a kit that is slightly more affordable.
The kit is run by the second generation TD-27 drum module which is quite powerful. Along with that, you get three 10-inch tom pads, a KD-10 kick tower, a hi-hat pad, and two crash pads.
Here are the exact specifics of everything included with the kit:
Roland TD-27 second gen drum module
14” PD-140DS snare pad
3x PDX-100 tom pads
KD-10 kick drum tower
12” VH-10 hi-hat pad
12” CY12C crash pad
13” CY13R crash pad
18” CY-18DR ride pad
MDS Series rack
The construction of this kit is top-quality. When sitting and playing it, you can feel how solidly everything has been built. The drum pads steal the show as they’re the most attractive aspect of this set.
While the PD-140DS snare pad is the highlight, the tom pads feel just as responsive. Roland has somehow created a digital snare pad that feels incredibly similar to an acoustic pad. You can lay into the snare the same way you would on a metal snare drum.
The cymbals are quite responsive as well. They all have multiple trigger zones and can be choked fairly easily.
As you’d expect, the mesh heads on each pad can be tuned to different tensions, allowing you to get a custom feel on your kit.
The Roland MDS rack that holds everything together is very cleverly designed. When you disconnect all the drum pads from it, you can fold it up very neatly to pack away somewhere. It makes storing the kit a lot easier than the more expensive kits from Roland.
We love the fact that the snare drum and hi-hat pads use dedicated hardware stands. Having the hi-hat on a real stand makes playing an electronic drum set feel a lot better than it would if the pad simply had a trigger pedal.
However, we’re a bit disappointed that you need to buy those stands separately. We understand that it keeps costs down to omit them, but it would be nice if they came with the kit.
The TD-27 second generation module has so much depth to it. The two big things to note are that it uses Roland’s Prismatic Sound Modeling Engine and PureAcoustic Ambience Technology.
The Prismatic Sound Modeling allows you to customize the drum sounds to an incredible extent. If you don’t like the sounds of the preset kits, you can alter their tone and tuning to get a preferred sound for you.
The PureAcoustic Technology allows you to change what the room sounds like that the drums are being played in. You can also change virtual microphone positions. Amazing stuff!
Other than those two big features, you get everything else that you’d expect from a Roland module. This includes practice features, Bluetooth capabilities, and MIDI connectivity. You can also easily load in your own sample sounds to the module if you’d like.
Roland is the best electronic drum company in the world. The performance quality of kits like this is what proves that statement. The samples from the module sound amazing, and the pads are responsive and dynamic enough for drummers to play quite musically.
What you give to the TD-27KV2, the kit gives back to you. It feels so good to play the digital snare pad, and having a larger ride cymbal pad is very resemblant of an acoustic kit.
There’s nothing bad we have to say here about the performance of the kit. It’s an excellent kit to play, and any drummer would love playing it.
If you’re not a fan of the extensive sounds on the module, connecting the kit to a VST on a computer would be an easy way of getting better sounds. You’d still get the benefit of the highly responsive drum pads.
Although the kit is a lot more affordable than Roland’s top-tier kits, it still costs about $3000. That’s not a cheap kit by any means. In fact, you could buy most top-tier acoustic kits with that amount of cash.
However, we think the price is quite reasonable considering everything you get. Electronic kits have different pricing structures to acoustic kits. So, you need to compare this kit to the other electronic kits on the market.
Compared to kits like the Roland TD-50KV2 and the Roland VAD706, this particular kit is a sweet deal. It has a similar quality to those kits but comes with half of the price tag.
You’re going to need to save to buy it, but it will be well worth all the money you spend on getting it.
Roland has been the top electronic drum company for decades. Their drum sets are highly sought after, allowing them to boost their prices slightly. However, the biggest reason the drums are expensive is that they cost a lot to make.
Roland needs to make profits after all their production costs, so the kits are more expensive than electronic kits from other brands. They sound a lot better too, making the extra costs well worth it.
Unfortunately, the only pad on the Roland TD-27KV2 that has positional sensing is the PD-140DS snare drum pad. You can strike the pad in different areas on the surface to get varying sounds. Those different sounds also respond well to dynamic playing.
The rest of the pads don’t have positional sensing, but they have multiple trigger zones, allowing you to play different sounds on the surfaces and the rims.
It’s not as ideal playing an electronic kit as it is playing an acoustic kit. However, electronic drums are great for what they are. They offer quite a bit that you can’t get from acoustic sets.
Having one kit in front of you that has a built-in metronome, practice tools, and multiple drum kit sounds is an epic thing to have. That’s why electronic kits are excellent practice options. You can also play them without worrying about bothering anyone with loud sounds.
Electronic drum sets aren’t the most ideal kits to use in studio recording situations, especially in professional contexts as it’s always more organic when using an acoustic drum set. However, this kit will work perfectly if you want to do some recordings with it to make drum videos.
It sounds excellent, and recording via USB MIDI is so much easier than recording an acoustic kit with 7 drum microphones. You can find quite a few YouTube drummers using this kit. Watching those videos will show you how well it works.
The Roland TD-27KV is more ideal for being used for live gigs than it is for recording. This kit thrives in live gig settings where electronic drums are needed. It’s quite compact, but it looks good enough on a stage thanks to the snare and ride pads.
It’s quite common to see this kit being used on live TV shows with a backing band for singers. Since the kit sounds quite natural, it’s a worthy alternative to an acoustic kit. It’s also a lot easier to mix. That’s why it’s an ideal option for live TV.
If you’re looking to buy a good electronic drum set, we highly suggest you consider getting the Roland TD-27KV2. It’s advertised as Roland’s mid-level flagship kit, and it offers the best of what they have for the price point it has.
The large snare and ride pads are the most attractive features, and the high-quality TD-27 module boasts extensive sound editing features.
This is an excellent kit. The value-for-money is high and the sounds on the module speak for themselves.
Drum Teacher
Brett Clur has a Drum Performance Diploma from Trinity College London has been playing drums for over 20 years. He is passionate about advanced concepts and uses his years of experience to teach his students about them. While he is a full-time drum teacher, he is also working on growing a YouTube channel where shares his insights. You can see him playing there, or on Instagram where he posts daily videos.
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