“What we get here is the essence of Alesis’ flagship electronic drum set, with all the great features, minus the stuff that is likely to be ‘nice-to-have’ rather than essential”: Alesis Strata Core review

Man plays the Alesis Strata Core drum kit with a bass player and guitarist.

Earlier this year, Alesis dropped a bombshell with the Strata Prime: an electronic drum kit that seemingly came from nowhere and instantly wowed me with its performance. I say seemingly, because on the surface it was a quiet plot unveiled to rapturous applause.

However, if you’ve been paying attention, the Strata Prime was actually more of a logical progression for the brand. You see, in 2020, Alesis’ parent company, InMusic snapped up the BFD virtual drum library, which had been somewhat left floundering without much development by previous owner ROLI. What does a hardware company need one of the leading drum software plugins for? To power its hardware, of course.