Note heads simply don't work

Remember that MuseScore 0.9.6 is not out. You are using a prerelease or a nightly.
Please read the difference between [[nodetitle:Comparison of stable, prerelease, and nightly builds|stable, prerealeases and nighlies]]

For what it worth, the noteheads are working for me in the current trunk. Meaning, I open demo, select a notehead on the score, double click a notehead in the notehead palette

Normal, cross, diamond, and star are the only note heads available for Drum notation. You mention that they are solid. Of course they are only solid if the note duration is a quarter note or less. Half notes and whole notes have open note heads.

I think you can change the noteheads for a drum staff by editing the drumset.
It will change all noteheads of a given instrument.

- Create a score with drumset 5 lines
- Right click on the staff -> Staff properties
- Select the instrument and choose noteheads etc ...

I have the same problem and suspect it has something to do with drum-sounds.
I cannot get the drum sounds even though I accidentally get "standard drums" on instruments in 0.9.4. files which I import in 0.9.5.
I save in 0.9.5 and restart - no drums.
I can not assign drums to normal instrument staff. Standard1-2-3 ... becomes Bright Yamaha Piano.

I tried to create examples with 0.9.5 which have drum-staffs, but no notes can be entered there.
I thought it was because the sound font file only covers timber-instruments?
I wondered whether I could concatenate soundfont-files?
I use ecasound and timidity for midiplaying and TiMIDIty can read multiple soundpatch files.
I consider it to be a temporary problem. The other instruments work nicely.