15 ' Sound Edge hats

OK - TGE was recorded with one pair of hi - hats,

Now the trick here is I play the Hats really loud - in fact too loud - when we recorded 'Churn' it was practically impossible to get the hi hat spill out of the room mikes so we had this problem - either leave the rooms mikes down or have hi - hat spill everywhere - we opted for hi hat spill.

The Hats on churn were a pair of 14" Sabian AA rock hats with a 'Brilliant' finish

On kiljoy - we solved the problem by using a lighter pair of hats - they were a pair of 14" A Zildjain quick beat hats with a dull finish - I have found that the dull finish hats just sound better when your using big room mikes - makes it less splashy.

Same with fish album although we didn't really use the room mikes on that one.

GE was a pair of A Zildjain 13" mastersound hi hats with a dull finish - The mastersounds have a ripple bottom hat similar to a paiste sound edge - I wanted to use the 14" version but the engineer - Brought his own pair of 13"'s that did sit better in the overall picture.

Nowadays live and on the last album I used a pair of 14" Sabian AA Flat hats which are practically identical to the Zildjain quick beats - again they are dull finish.

The Quick beats, the Flat hats and the Mastersounds all get round the problems of a kind of fluff sound created by air in between the cymbals by letting the air out by either holes in the bottom hat or ripples along the edge - this allows the hats to have a much more definitive 'Chick' sound when you play it with the foot and lets you accent more definately when closed. The dull finish just makes it less splashy and harsh when open and makes the stick work clearer.

There you go - fuckin' anal eh!

Cracker! - Thanks heaps for that Tom, hugely appreciated! I reckon the hi-hat sounds on TGE are absolutely primo, not harsh or in your face, yet nasty and aggressive and have a really distinctive tone that lets you hear all your dynamics.

Now I've just got to find myself a pair of Mastersounds... and learn to hit them like a real man.

The hats on Cave-In's new album sound really similar to the TGE ones too... really nice.

To tell you the truth I can't remember but I would suggest it was A custom - Zildjain had just released them in '99 so that may help - They we're 'dull' finish by the way!!

T

Had a listen to the samples on the zildjian website and the pitch of the A's seems way closer than the customs.

Cheers Tom - you're a legend!