Pearl Mimic Pro - Updated 8-31-17

I was lucky enough to see the prototype of the Pearl Mimic-Pro at Winter NAMM 2017. I talked to Raymond about the features and and watched him play on it listened to it. I asked to play on it but they were not letting anyone get any hands on it but Pearl employees. I did find out it works with Roland, Yamaha, and Pearl triggers for sure as all were hooked up to the Mimic-Pro on the demo kit. The dynamics seemed good on everything. The sounds were good. Just at a glance the interface seemed to make sense but I don't know what all you can do with the touch screen and how good the screen is. I was told they would start shipping in March but that has now been pushed back. 

May 10th Update: We are taking pre-orders on Mimic Pro with no money down. We are willing to match or beat prices to get your business. They word is they may start shipping later in May or in June. 

May 16th Update: I just heard from Pearl that we will be getting some Mimic Pro's this month ( May ). 

August 31st Update: After several more months of delays here we are almost in September 2017. We did get a small batch of units out to customers that ordered in February 2017 in Late June. Not near enough to fill all orders sadly. After several more updates we now have a late September ETA on the next shipment which is supposed to fill all backorders. The good news is there are enough units out there to get some customer feedback. Edrumcenter still has not gotten a unit to evaluate one ourselves but we are going to Pearl USA in Nashville to check it out soon. Initial customer feedback has been ok to good. No major bugs and the bugs that popped up all got fixed quickly. More updates, fixes, and tweaks are supposedly in the works in the near future. The appeal of the Mimic Pro is it plays real drum samples. It comes stock with a few really nice acoustic kits. The sound quality is not in doubt, everyone raves about that. Initially the unit didn't come with any percussion sounds ( cow bell, wood block ) but there were updates to add some and more will be added very shortly according to Pearl. You can also load more sounds in yourself at any time. The crucial triggering performance has gotten mixed reviews. We have been given feedback by several customers that it doesn't trigger as crisp as say the Roland TD-30 or TD-50 with Roland pads. The ATV AD5 gets compared a lot too and the triggering is supposedly crisper on it as well with Roland pads and ATV aDrums. Another important feedback is that the Mimic is hard to get "dialed in". Because it works with so many pad types it can be trial and error to get decent performances out of your pads and cymbals. It's not near plug and play like say a Roland module with Roland pads and cymbals at least in early versions. These things could be related and are probably fixable but its worth noting. The customer who just wants to upgrade from say a TD-20 or TD-30 and doesn't want to mess with a bunch of settings to get the drums to trigger how they want may want to keep this in mind. Tweaks to improve this are supposedly in the works and there will eventually be some published settings as more end users get their hands on the Mimic. It's recently been confirmed that Mimic-Pro works with ATV's new aDrums which start shipping soon. ATV got hold of a Mimic Pro and tested it with their aDrums, made a video with it, and even published some settings for users.