Yep, been playing the drums for about 14 years now. I saw the mesh snare on the set you were playing. As far as comfort and quietness those are probably your best bet though they're also the most expensive type of pads for their size. As far as rubber pads wearing out anything you buy, even the lower end stuff from companies like Yamaha and Roland, is going to hold up fine. I've seen some cheap electronic kits from smaller companies I'd never heard of before with some of the worst quality I'd ever seen that would probably be a different story, but you wouldn't have trouble with anything from the bigger guys 99% of the time. The kits that came packaged with Rock Band and Guitar Hero a few years ago were literally bottom of the barrel, but it's what happens when you're buying a video game with a handful of plastic instruments and a microphone for a few hundred bucks. The real stuff is made to hold up a lot better. I did have a Roland kit with rubber pads before that was probably four or five years old when I bought it, and that was about seven or eight years ago. I gave it to my dad when I got a better electronic kit, but when he sold it just a few months back it worked as well as the day I bought it. And truth be told, the mechanisms in most rubber pads are so simple you could probably repair one, or even build one from scratch with a modest investment of time and money. There's not a whole lot that can go wrong with them really. It's more likely that every other part of the kit would break first. Sorry to ramble a bit there. Long story short, the rubber pads would probably outlast everything else. But I'd still recommend Yamaha's white pads (I wish I could remember what they're made of at the moment) or mesh heads for feel and volume reasons.
I think the set I was playing had a mesh snare, and I had thought of the rubber pads wearing out because that was a complaint I heard from a friend who was into Rock Band/Guitar Hero for a while. Do you play the drums?
When it comes to not annoying people, the better Yamaha pads and the Roland mesh pads are much better too. A lot quieter. The mesh being the quietest, but not having as realistic a feel as the Yamaha stuff.
bawk bawk bawk bawk
