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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yii multiple select dropdownlist with default values

So I was coding a form in Yii, and came across a situation where I had a value of 0111110 (no, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no) that I needed to pre-populate values in a multiple select drop down. This didn't seem like it should be that hard, but the Yii documentation lacked a bit there. The first step was to split out the string. $optionValues = str_split($model->variable); Now, we create a blank array to hold our options. $options = array(); Then, we go through those options and set selected on the ones that need selected. foreach ($optionValues as $optionKey=>$optionVal) {      if ($optionVal) {         $options[$optionKey] = array('selected' => 'selected');     } } Now, we render the drop down list. echo $form->dropDownList($model, 'variable', array('0' => 'Zero', '1' => 'One','2'=>'Two','3' => 'Three', '4' => 'Four', '5' =&g
Read more

May 2021 updates

 Lots of work has been done since I last posted. Everything feels different, and gigs have been scheduled. It's time to get ready to play live again. Maiden Voyage We're playing a primarily hispanic audience show in a few weeks. New bass player is continuing to learn the songs, new guitar player keeps impressing me with his resolve, and as a band we feel ready for a couple hours of Maiden music. We're also playing a benefit for our lost blood brother in July, where we'll be playing the set list we did at our final show with him. Somehow, Live After Death seems fitting for that show, so that's what we're performing. We also have a special "something" planned for the first song which should hit everyone right in the feels. Pop Band We're currently using the name Hard Candy for this one. We're going to be playing a couple of benefit shows to get things started on stage. One is for our former drummer Dan and also the one with Maiden Voyage in Bill&
Read more

Been getting busy

It's been a while since I posted, so I thought it was time for an update. Maiden Voyage is starting to get busy. This summer saw quite a few shows and several benefits with us performing. We had our first show with us providing sound, which meant I had to buy a trailer. That was going to become necessary anyway just to continue moving our light show around, so it just worked out well. We played in Lincoln for the first time. Nothing earth shattering about playing another town about 60 miles from where we're based, but after that one show we immediately booked 2 more in Lincoln with minimal effort. Guess that first show is the most important one like they say... only one chance for that first impression. Speaking of 2 more shows with minimal effort, that's how most of our shows are happening now. We're not even looking for shows all that hard and are starting to have booking agencies and show promoters contacting us about being a headliner for some bands they'r
Read more