What's the occasion for the concert? Might be around for some guitar relief and the occasional not so wicked vocals.
Electronic kits are very fun. No tuning, same stick response no matter what the tune of the drum, and you can setup the pads where they are all next to each other, which is quite hard for an acoustic set where you have to position around a bass drum a tom-toms An acoustic set will make the learning curve much more steep than it could be with a plug and play electric kit. An electric kit could also provide much better platform for learning basic stick control much better because when he hits the toms he qon't have to tweak his hands in a weird position. I love how you first declare what not to get, showing your huge bias, then ask questions. Your overall ability as a drummer has much more to do with stick control and syncopation. I would suggest a real electronic instrument made by Roland or Yamaha. Electronic drums are great for beginners.
I briefly played with a band where the drummer put the v-drum heads on real toms. So the cymbals were real but the 3 toms, the bass drum, and the snare were all synth. He carried around a bass drum that never actually got used just to give off the appearance of it being a real kit. It was ridiculous. And I wouldn't get an electronic drum kit either, not if REALLY want to learn how to play. If you plan on moving to a real kit at some point, I say just go ahead and bite the bullet now or you'll learn how to play one way on an electronic kit and have to relearn some things once you move to a real kit. That could cause some trouble down the road. Learning how to elicit good tone from the set is part of playing the drums. You're going to have to learn how to do it sooner or later, might as well do it now while you're learning or else you could be in for a rude awakening later. You could learn to play beats well on electronic drums but still sound like crap on real drums because you never learned how to REALLY play.
It is pretty hard to mic and EQ drums. And you are mostly at the mercy of the "sound guy". If I was him I would have probably dumped at least one of those 3 toms to save weight and used a V-drum shell.
In this band, they were their own sound guy. I did a gig with them in Kemah for Memorial Day last year and they had the v-drums coming out of the PA but the cymbals and the acoustic snare that he used on certain songs weren't miked. So half of the kit was amplified and the other half wasn't. And this guy couldn't play. He constantly dropped beats and he had his high hats set up at eye level. It was ridiculous.
Just Luke's RockBand people getting together to play. I'm sure you're welcome to come. I'll call you and give you details.
Well, if you’re not really serious about it and just looking to have fun (which is totally cool, btw), I would recommend starting small and getting something like this: Spoiler
Dude must get in the car and wonder where the other pedals are. That kit has 15 pedals that I can count.
Is that Bozzio's current setup or something? I saw him at the guitar center one westheimer it looked way different.
