Help me spend some money upgrading my kit!

[LooseSends]

My current setup is:

- Alesis Crimson II snare
- An extra Crimson II snare for floor tom
- Cannibalized Alesis Surge kit pads for the hightoms (4pc)
- Cannabalized Alesis cymbals (3pc)
- Lemon 18" ride
- Another Lemon 18" ride for Crash
- Alesis Surge kick
- Alesis pad for high hat using home-made hall sensor retrofit pedal (great range and works great!)
- homemade Sidestick trigger
- homemade cowbell trigger

Yeah, it's a bit of a Frankenstein setup but overall does what I need it to do as a studio kit and sounds damn good for the money using Addictive Drums 2.

But...I'm ready to spend a few bucks to make some improvements. Mainly, I'm not happy with the high hat which misses some hits when struck while closing the pedal on faster beats for some reason. Also, I find that the minimal threshold for triggering is too high despite keeping the gate barely above the background noise level (which isn't abnormally high and seems to work well with the mesh pads).

The other problem I find with Alesis pads - unless it's something I'm doing fundamentally wrong - is that a "hit" with normal force triggers AD2 samples too harshly as if hitting them too hard. Not just volume but sounding like I'm playing them harder than I actually am, and no it's not audio clipping. Of course, the solution is to simply limit the articulation range so that the output articulation matches, but that REALLY constrains the dynamic range to at least half in order to sound good. I'm also not a particularly hard striker when I play.

I've kind of come to the conclusion that it might be that these are mostly unsupported pads and trigger hotter than they should.

So I have two options I'm considering that maybe you can help me with:

1. Sell a kidney and buy a pro kit of some sort without the module so I can get "good" pads. OR...

2. Just replace the high-hat setup for now.

For option 1 what would you recommend? Can I buy a pro kit without a module or would I just have to piece it out new or used?

For option 2, what is the best high-hat setup out there that can handle all the articulations like a real HH, allows for HH bell?

I guess option 3 could simply be to just replace the crappy Alesis pad I'm using for a HH and keep my homemade hall-sensor pedal.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!