Drumdrops Rogers Big R Dub Kit Review And Giveaway! (3 Free Copies)

Drumdrops have expanded their Kontakt instrument arsenal with the release of Rogers Big R Dub Kit, a multi-sampled acoustic drum kit designed for use in dub music. They’ve also been kind enough to provide 3 free copies of their brand new kit to 3 lucky BPB readers and a special 10% discount coupon code!

This 1970s Rogers Big R Dub Kit is the kit that Drumdrops used to record Drumdrops in Dub Volume 3 and Drumdrops in Ska and it has been sampled up in great detail at Drumdrops HQ. The kit is available to purchase in three packs and is a must for all those dub fiends out there.

I was pretty eager to test the Rogers Big R Dub Kit as I was rather impressed with the Premier Outfits 54 Drum Kit which was recently released by Drumdrops. It turned out to be a perfect drum sample library for indie and pop music, featuring a set of high quality samples of a vintage British drum kit similar to the one used by Ringo Starr of The Beatles. You can read the full review of the Premier Outfits kit by clicking here.

Drumdrops took a similar route with the Rogers Big R Dub Kit, building a unique drum sample library with meticulously recorded samples and pairing it up with a practical and brilliantly designed NI Kontakt interface.

The Sample Library

For this drum sample library, Drumdops have sampled a 1970s Rogers drum set located in Miloco’s Ironworks Studio in Brighton. The same drum set was previously used for recording their acclaimed Dub Volume 3 and Drumdrops in Ska drum loop collections.

The sample library features one kick drum (a 24″ x 14″ Roger Big R Kick Drum) with dampened and undampened articulations, two snare drums (Ludwig Black Magic Snare Drum and Ludwig Acrolite Snare Drum) with four articulations each, one hi-hat (Zildjian A Sweet Hi Hat), one crash cymbal (Zildjian Custom A Crash), two Rogers Big R rack toms, one Rogers Big R floor tom, timbale, bongos, and a cool additional set of electronic percussion sounds which are controlled using modulation. Each part of the drum set comes with up to 16 velocity layers and 6 round robin layers, resulting in a lively, non-artificial performance when playing the kit.

The great thing about this sample collection is that it provides a breath of fresh air among all the rock and metal drum sample packs which we regularly see. It is a unique sounding dub drum kit with hardly any direct competition on today’s market.

For years and years I’ve been impressed by the drum sound on the Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires album by Scientist. Here’s my favorite track from that album and pretty much one of my favorite tracks ever. I’ve been trying so hard to achieve that sweet and sticky (in lack of better words) drum sound with other sample libraries, but I’ve never actually nailed it. The thing is that you can get only so much closer with tape saturation, compression and EQ, but the natural sound of the drum kit is what actually defines the overall feel.

And wow, I was so happy when I played around with the Rogers Big R Dub Kit for the first time, because it provides that exact starting point which is needed for building great sounding dub loops. The kick drum is tight and punchy, the snare sounds so sweet and snappy. The entire drum kit layers perfectly with the huge and dominant bass guitar sound which is the foundation of my favorite dub mixes. In the words of Tuco Salamanca, this kit is tight… tight, tight, yeah!

The Kontakt Interface

The Kontakt 5 version of the Rogers Big R Dub Kit comes with 5352 audio samples in 24-bit quality, making a total of 1.2 GB of audio data. A Lite version of the Kontakt kit is also provided, conatining less samples for faster load times and better performance on laptops and slower desktop computers.

The custom Kontakt interface (programmed by Channel Robot and designed by Alex Collins from Ether Creative) complements the samples perfectly, allowing quick and easy processing of each drum element and adding some great bonus features such as a lovely set of spring reverb impulses and Kontakt’s built-in effects.

The interface is split into three sections (Mixer, Settings, and Kit). The Mixer section is used for controlling the volume of each microphone channel, as well as processing the channels with a handy 4-band EQ and the built-in transient shaper effect. The master channel comes with a bus compressor and switchable tape saturation which works great for smoothing out the overall sound of the kit. The bus compressor also includes a Mix control knob for easy NY style compression.

Each channel comes with 2 send controls. Since the Kontakt kit includes some great sounding reverb impulses (my favorite one being the Fairchild 659A spring reverb unit), it’s very easy to apply some reverb to several different elements of the drum set and get that nice spacey dub sound. The Kontakt interface also includes randomization controls and custom velocity curve settings which are available in the Settings and Kit panels.

Although it’s very easy to tweak the drum kit according to your needs, Drumdrops have also included a nice little library of factory presets for the virtual mixer panel. The 14 provided presets were designed by several different mix engineers and provide a good starting point for your own mixes. They also show how versatile this kit can be and that it can also sound great in hip hop tunes and other urban music styles.

Other Versions

People who don’t use NI Kontakt can choose between two alternative versions of the Rogers Big R Dub Kit. These come with a reduced price tag and a smaller set of samples, with MIDI mappings and software templates for all major samplers and drum machines.

The Multi-Velocity Pack contains all the different articulations from the full Kontakt kit (with all 16 velocity layers) for a total of 467 audio samples in 24-bit WAV format. The samples can be loaded in any DAW using one of the provided templates. All major formats are supported and the full list of included templates is available on the official site.

The Single Hits Pack is designed for beatmakers who don’t need a large amount of different velocity layers. All articulations from the kit are included, with up to 3 velocity layers per articulation. The Single Hits Pack contains 116 audio samples in 24-bit WAV format. The pack is perfect for use with hardware samplers such as the MPC60 by Akai, although it also contains mappings for all major hardware and software samplers.

Final Thoughts

The Rogers Big R Dub Kit is easily the best currently available multi-sampled dub drum kit. You should definitely get it if you produce dub music and consider it as a great option if you’re a hip hop producer or a rock/pop producer looking to add some versatility to their drum arsenal.

The kit sounds fantastic, comes with a great Kontakt interface and support for all major formats. It’s obvious that a lot of love and hard work went into making the Rogers Big R Dub Kit such a polished product.

The Kontakt version of the Rogers Big R Dub Kit is priced at $66, while the Multi-Velocity Pack and the Single Hits Pack come with a reduced price tag ($24.75 and $12.38 respectively). You can get a 10% discount by using the bedroomroger10 coupon code during checkout. Scroll down the page to enter the giveaway for a chance to win a free copy of the kit!

Video Demo

Check out the Rogers Big R Dub Kit intro video:

The Giveaway

Drumdrops are kindly giving away 3 copies of their brilliant Rogers Big R Dub Kit to three lucky BPB readers. Here’s the list of available prizes:

• Kontakt 5 kit (1 winner)
• Multi-Velocity Pack (1 winner)
• Single Hits Pack (1 winner)

Entering the giveaway is very easy and should take only a couple of minutes of your time. There are four different ways (three of which are completely optional) to enter the giveaway and increase your chances of winning:

1. Submit your name and email address (REQUIRED)
2. Like the BPB page on Facebook (OPTIONAL)
3. Follow BPB on Twitter (OPTIONAL)
4. Post a Tweet about BPB (OPTIONAL)

The giveaway ends at midnight on Tuesday, December 24th. The three winners will be automatically generated using a random draw and announced on this page! They will also be notified via email. Use the form below or click here to enter the giveaway! Good luck everyone!

I’d also like to thank Drumdrops for giving away 3 copies of their latest drum kit for free on BPB! Many thanks to Drumdrops for this kind offer and thank you all for reading BPB!