Midi compatible mapping or random/custom? Process in instrument efx chains per drum sound or route out to channels? I have built some, but I still always end up just chunking drum samples in separate instruments and sequencing and processing each mostly on their own tracks. I am wondering: what are the practical advantages of kitting up some drum sounds?
The advantage is portability. You can easily share a kit with other people. And you can play it with a MIDI controler.
When it comes to FX, I treat the instrument FX as sound shaping FX (i.e., FX that are integral to the drum sound), and the track FX as mixing FX (i.e., not to alter the drum sound significantly, but to fit it into the mix).
Personally i never use any drumkits or do my own. I usually end up with multiple kicks, snares and such for extra layers which would simply not fit into the default categorization / mapping of most drumkits which go by the GM standard. In the few cases where i used a drumkit from a sampler there is probably 75% of the sounds unused in that kit too, so i just don’t bother spending any time on setting them up properly.
Sometimes use kits, mostly if it is a sampled real drum kit such as a drumkit I am using from drumdrops (recommend checking them out, lots of mulitsampled high quality drums and they do renoise instruments). Otherwise I can often stack samples and as stated earlier, wouldn’t be worth it as a kit.
I haven’t made my own as yet. However, I most likely will in future.