I know lots of folks like to add their own personal touches to VST drums, and have separate tracks for each kit piece. I use EZD2, and just stick with one drum track, and edit levels, etc, in the VST box itself.
 
So my question is, aren't the included kits and patterns sampled "mix ready"? Does everyone separate out all the kit pieces, and what sort of editing do you guys do to these supposedly mix-ready drums?
 
I'm not a drummer, but the patterns and sounds seem pretty damn good to me w/o tweaking. What sorts of things to you guys do to VST drums, outside the VST (i.e. with Sonar tools or other plugs).
 
Thanks.
 
~Jeff

I separate all the kit pieces out.  "Mix ready" isn't really truthful, as every mix will be different.  Maybe they're pre-mixed to sound good alone, but not many of us really want to listen to a drum solo.
While the EZD pieces already have some EQ and Compression, they're likely not perfect for whatever instruments I'm adding to them.  By separating/ isolating, i can pan, eq, compress, or add other FX as I need.

I only separate parts that will be played by a different drum VST.
My old way was my kick was always TTS_1 and the rest all together in one track and driving
originally, Session drummer, then AD2 and now I'm switching over to Strike2.  One advantage of keeping the kick separate is I could apply reverb via the audio track to the rest of the kit.
 All tweaking is done in the drum GUI. There's no need for audio processing on my set up, the GUI does it all and Strike2 is by far the easiest drum VST I've used to dial in what I have in my head. I never got AD2 to sound right. And Session drummer now sounds dead to me. 

I separate everything out to different tracks (kick, snare, hi hats, exc).
Because while it may sound great on its own or in small mixes, when you begin to add 15-20 tracks of Bass, Vocals, Guitars and so on...these other instruments rob frequency's. thus the kick must be dialed in properly.
EZ drummer is a great Drum sim but there is no possible way to dial in a great authentic sounding kick by merely using the EZ Drummer interface.
 
By splitting up the kick it also allows you to sound stack drums a lot easier. for example using drum replacer to add a few more kick samples. I have found the best kick and snare sounds are those that have multiple samples combined and not just one track. by having a main kick and then layering it with 2 more samples it really thickens things up nicely.
 
Also keep in mind the only way to use real good plug ins like waves, exc to dial in the perfect kick sound is to split the kit up so each instrument is on its own track. In order to hi pass / low pass certain kit pieces to clean them up they have to be on separate tracks. 
 
At all cost when ever possible use a real kit. I don't care how great the samples are, it will never, ever beat a real kit.
But if you don't have a real kit at your disposal and your trying to fudge a real drum sound, separate the kit pieces.
Here's the best way to do it with session drummer 3

Like Chuck said, more control over processing with a large mix... especially with EQ.  But what matters is how important it is to you and your "sound" compared to the other facets of mixing (based on your expected outcome and available time,) because you can still get good results.  Unfortunately, time hasn't been on my side, so I often go the easy route. 
 

I use Superior Drummer 2. As these are samples only and not treated as they are in EZD I treat them like I've recorded the drums live in my studio. It provides the ultimate flexibility.

All my drums come out dry from AD2 onto separate strips on the console. I prefer to balance all the sounds against each other in one mixer, so I the bass and bassdrum are in the same view, I like adding the Prochannel and vsts on individual kit pieces, as well as group them and parrralell process them,  use 2-3 reverbs to mix everything to one mix.

Thanks for all the replies, guys. Much appreciated. I wasn't aware of the issues Chuck mentioned.
 
As always, this forum rules!
 
~Jeff