Gear Friday: Meinl HCS Hi-Hats

I'm always looking for a bargain, so when I came across these Meinl HCS hats and was able to pick them up for next-to-nothing (I think they're normally around $60 new), I jumped on the chance. The Tama hats I was using before were cracked by an over-eager percussionist at some point during a rehearsal, so I needed something that wasn't broken.

While they're brighter than the Ziljian K Custom Darks that Alex used on the first set of videos, he opted to use my Meinl hats on the second round of videos. I think it was mostly for ease (he has his metal out of town with his kit at his band's practice pad), but either way they sounded pretty good for what we were recording. The video below is of him playing with those as part of the kit.

The kit is comprised of some vintage Zildjian cymbals (crash and crash/ride), a CB Percussion crash, and some odds/ends that I'm not even sure what they were (I think they were some more CB Percussion cymbals) stacked for a trashy sounding accent. This all sits on top of an old, very used Mapex Mars 4 piece kit that I picked up from a pawn shop a while back and then added a Yamaha snare to.

While this isn't a high end dark hat by any stretch of the imagination, these hats will get the job done when it comes to sounding decent for a wide variety of songs. But, much as guitar tone, cymbal tone is a personal preference, so I'm letting you judge the recording to decide for yourself if they will match the sound you're looking for.