Do GIANT Hihats Sound Better than 14" Hats?

the hipster drummers of the world have been championing giant high hats over the last few years is this just a dumb fad or is there something cool to it let's find out we're gonna compare a pair of 20-inch high hats with a pair of 14-inch high hats and the end of the video we're gonna add a little something extra to the 20s to see if we can enhance their sound hey everybody welcome to the non-glamorous drummer if you're new to the channel and you've yet to subscribe be sure to hit the subscribe button let's time down the kid Wow okay these are giant high hats in case you couldn't tell I repurposed my 20 inch K custom darkride this one only right here and my a 20 inch crash that I've put way over to the right occasionally so I have down on the bottom since the thicker heavier cymbal and I have the thinner darker K custom dark ride on top we've got 20 inch we're gonna compare these with 18 inch with 16 inch with 14 inch and so what kind of see the differences between them first let's kind of talk about some basic pros and cons because let's say you do have an extra set of cymbals lying around I have a bunch of aids in a bunch of k's and so it happens that a lot of those are the same sizes so it makes it easy to do this I don't think that you can buy a pair of 20-inch high hats out there I think that anybody who's doing that is repurposing crashes or ride cymbals now of course I had to adjust the spring tension of the stand so that it wouldn't just drop so I've got the tension all the way tight which feels about right I don't think I'd want to do cymbals any heavier than this if I mount on the tambourine on top that would probably weigh it down too much so there's something to be aware of you've got to really tighten up that tension on your hi-hat stand and make sure it'll pop up the top cymbal so the first obvious thing is if you don't like having high hats close to you this is gonna be a problem because there's so much closer just for reference here here's one of my 14 inch high hats if we set this on top here just resting on top of the clutch you can see how much smaller a 14-inch cymbal is compared to the 20 inch and so that's just how much closer to you it's gonna be if we do the math there it's gonna be three inches closer to you if you're going from 14 inch to 20 inch so you can think of it that way or you can think of it okay now your foots got to be further away you've got to extend your leg out which could be a good thing that might not be a bad thing at all it might be nice to be able to extend your leg a little further and still have the cymbals closed so if something to play around with something that you they like her you may not like the initial question though was okay with the big hi-hat being being such a hipster kind of thing it's always the like the hipster drummers that always seem to be doing that is it just a fad is it dumb is it overkill or is it actually kind of cool those are kind of the questions that we're asking here that we want to keep in mind as we're listening to all of these and just to give you a little of my input as we're testing these out because you get to form your own opinion as you listen to these everybody's entitled to their opinion which has a lot to do with their personal tastes and what kind of music you play what you listen to but my thoughts are that the larger the high hats are the gear they're gonna be there might still be some attack it's gonna be harder to get a really tight clothes sound out of them because there's just always gonna be that loose gooeyness but that loose gush enos means that they're gonna sit better in a mix that maybe there needs to not be a cutting hi-hat in let's say the song doesn't call for a lot of clothes cutting hi-hat maybe you're not even close miking the high hats when you're recording it maybe it literally needs a kind of a background sort of hi-hat slosh eNOS well that's where there is something to say for for the big hats because they just sit back there in the mix and they don't get in the way of anything I heard a drummer say one time he really liked using 15-inch high hats just because they were a little bit darker than 14s and they didn't interfere as much with the frequencies as the electric guitars it all depends on what the guitar players are doing what other instruments are in the mix but if your high hats are to present and they're getting too much in the way having bigger hats can actually help solve that problem so what we're gonna do now is cycle through each pair of high hats I'm going to switch these back out to my 14s and so I'm just going to play a basic groove and we're gonna go straight from the 14 to 16 to 18 to 20s and then we're gonna try something a little different with the 20s to see how unique we can make these sound [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so I do think that out of the oddly sized symbols I wasn't a big fan of the 16s maybe because they were both fairly thin crashes I just didn't know they didn't sound that cool the 18s are okay but honestly I think the 20s are the coolest maybe it has to do with the fact that it's a ride cymbal on top rather than a crash that means it's a little bit thicker kind of like most high hats high hats are not super thin they're actually kind of thick when you think about the size like the thickness to size ratio is a little different from with crash cymbals maybe that's the key here if you've got a ride cymbal to put on top that's probably gonna sound better than if you've got both crashes of course rides only go so small so from here we could go to I don't know 21 inch hats 22 24 inch hats if I had cymbals that big but I don't so this is big as we're gonna go but I said I was gonna try someone else there's a bunch of sustain on these already I love how there's so much sustain so much slosh it's just a constant kind of sound that could be really great for certain genres of music certain songs I'm gonna put a sizzle on it though we'll see what happens with the sizzler cuz that's gonna add a little bit more of the high end you know we've got a lot of this low end kind of gooeyness which is cool but can we add a little bit more sizzle and will it increase the sustain could that sound better so let's listen to it without the sizzling and witnesses Lou you guys tell me which one you like more [Music] [Music] now taking it off [Music] [Music] it's interesting there's not actually a huge of a difference as I would think and it might be because the sizzler is so small and the symbols are so big tell me what you think in the comments and maybe as I go back and I'm mixing this I'm listening to the recordings I might find that oh the scissor does make a big difference because as it's being picked up by the overhead mics it's gonna sound a little different than to my ear through these I don't have a ton of these mics in my ear so I don't know we'll see I hope this video helped you out and provided you with something interesting whether or not you'd like to try something like this with your kids you've got the extra cymbals lying around be sure to share the video and become a fellow non-glamorous drummer by subscribing if you haven't already thanks for watching I'll see you on the next video

Channel: Stephen Clark

Views: 86,967

Keywords: drums, drumming, drummer, drum, music, play, learn, practice, lessons, videos, how to, better, stephen clark, stephen, clark, steven, the non glamorous drummer, non, glamorous, set, kit, drum set, drum kit, hihats, hats, hi hat, hi, hat, size, 20, 18, 16, 14, 13, inch, inches, hihat size, best, hipster, gushy, comparison, versus, giant, huge, ride cymbal as hihat, ride as hihat, ride cymbal hihat, frequencies, piercing, cutting, softer, lower, zildjian, zildjian K, zildjian A, K custom dark, sizzler on hihat, sizzler

Id: eMLHArer4fo

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 22 2019