Zildjian cymbals land on Alesis kits | From £39
Alesis has partnered with Zildjian to put Artist Vault cymbal sounds on Strata kits and BFD. Session Mix Vol 1 is out now at £39 in a launch offer.
Ask an electronic drummer what they would change about their kit and you will nearly always get the same answer. It is never the snare. It is the cymbals.
Alesis has just announced a partnership with the Zildjian Company to fix exactly that — genuine Zildjian cymbal sounds, hand-selected from the Zildjian Artist Vault, sold as sound expansion packs for Strata kits and BFD.
The first one is out now. And there is a launch offer that knocks 60% off it.
What you can buy right now
Zildjian Session Mix Vol 1 is the pack that has landed, and it is not purely cymbals. Alesis describes it as a curated blend of studio-ready Zildjian cymbals and drums — bright, warm and controlled cymbals paired with a punchy bubinga kit, mixed to sit together out of the box.
It lists at £99, currently down to £39 as a launch offer. That is a big discount, so if it appeals, do not sit on it for six months.
Two more packs are announced but not out yet:
- Zildjian K Custom Dark — dark, dry and controlled, with the modern articulation the K Customs are known for. The one to watch if you want nuance rather than volume.
- Zildjian A Family — the bright, versatile, unmistakable A sound that has been all over records for decades.
There is also a Zildjian Expansion Collection Vol. 1 listed, bundling the A Family and K Custom Dark packs together. Coming soon, no price yet.
One purchase, three platforms
This is the part that deserves more attention than it will get.
Buy a pack once and you get those sounds across BFD Player, Strata modules and BFD 3.5. Not three licences. Not a separate module version and software version. One purchase, all platforms.
So the sounds you dial in on the kit at home are the same sounds waiting in your DAW when you go to record. For anyone who plays and produces, that is genuinely useful — and it is not how expansion packs usually work.
What is the Zildjian Artist Vault?
The Vault is where Zildjian keeps the cymbals that don’t go out to shops. Special pieces, one-offs and instruments with a story attached — the sort of thing an artist gets flown in to hunt through before a record.
Zildjian have been making cymbals since 1623, so there is rather a lot of history in there. Four hundred years of it, in fact.
Sampling from that stock rather than off a production line is the interesting bit. You are not getting a generic 16” crash. You are getting a particular cymbal, with whatever quirk made someone put it aside in the first place.
Why is this harder than it sounds?
Because cymbals are the hardest thing on a drum kit to sample.
A snare hit is a snare hit. A cymbal is a sustained, shimmering, constantly-changing wash that responds to how hard you hit it, where you hit it, and what you did half a second before. Miss any of that and you get the dreaded machine-gun effect — the same sample stuttering back at you.
That is why Alesis keeps banging on about dynamic range and response, promising everything from the lightest touch to full crashes translates. Get it right and a sampled ride feels alive under the stick. Get it wrong and it feels like a doorbell.
We will reserve judgement until we have played one. But sampling straight from the Vault, with Zildjian in the room, is about as good a starting point as you could ask for.
Hear it in action
Alesis has put out a launch video featuring Tosh Peterson and Dee Simone giving the sounds a proper workout. Worth your time — cymbal samples are one of those things you have to hear played dynamically rather than read about.
The full pack listings are on the official Alesis x Zildjian page.
The catch
It is Strata and BFD only, at least for now.
Alesis says the sounds are “integrated across Alesis hardware and BFD software”, but every pack announced so far is aimed at Strata kits, BFD Player and BFD 3.5. If you are on a Nitro or a Strike, there is nothing here for you yet.
There is no word on whether the rest of the range is getting anything, or on when the K Custom Dark and A Family packs land. We will update this post when Alesis says more.
Final thoughts
Electronic drums have been quietly excellent for years. Mesh heads solved the feel problem, modules solved the sound problem, and the one weak link left has been the cymbals — where the gap between “convincing” and “actually the real thing” has stayed stubbornly wide.
Going straight to the Zildjian Vault is the obvious answer, and it is a little surprising nobody did it sooner. At £39 for the launch pack, with the licence following you from the kit into your DAW, it is an easy thing to try if you own a Strata.
The rest of us will be over here, waiting to be invited to the party.
In the meantime, our guide to electronic splash cymbal pads and our china cymbal pad guide cover how to physically expand your e-kit, and the Roland TD-50X shows what the top end of the electronic world looks like right now.