Vector Bass Drum Pedal

I’ve heard quite a buzz about this pedal so when I was offered a chance to review it I jumped on it.

General Description

Out of the box, it comes with a nice carrying case with a shoulder strap. That’s a nice addition for the gigging drummer.  After taking the pedal out the first thing I noticed is that it’s built very well. No corners cut on workmanship, this pedal looks like it can take some abuse…you know, “the knock your drum set over at the end of your set” abuse.

It also comes with its own handy dandy drum key with hex end to make all of your adjustments a snap!  Very cool. 

The foot board is long, wide, and very comfortable. A lot of thought went into this pedal.  It comes with a standard round felt beater, I’m not a fan of those but that is something that can be easily changed out.  Moving on.

Adjustments

The adjustments on this pedal are at first intimidating but as I started playing with them I realized that they weren’t that bad after all. The adjustments are: Spring Tension, Beater Angle, Cam (left or right), footboard (can be set to a side angle), and the hoop clamp can be adjusted side to side. What I did was loosened the cam, footboard and hoop clamp adjustments, put my foot on it and wiggled it until it felt comfortable and then tightened everything down. Voila! Instant comfort! It ended up sitting at a slight angle to the bass drum (this was a single bass set up). Some drummers are a little more finicky but I’m sure even the most finicky drummer can set the adjustments quickly and easily.

Operation

This pedal is SMOOTH. Good response and great action. I like my pedals to have some good bounce back and this pedal has it! The overall feel of this pedal is great. I really enjoyed playing with it. I was able to play heavy when necessary and the action allowed very quick single bass playing.

Conclusion

This is a great pedal. It’s nice to see some independent companies making great product. This pedal has great action and durability, definitely some potential competition to the big boy companies. I would love to see a double version of it sometime!

I give this an 8 out of 10!

Matt Nolan Custom Cymbals

I’ve been noticing quite a few new cymbal companies popping up the past few years but a name that has been continuously brought up to me is Matt Nolan. I had the pleasure of meeting Matt at NAMM 2011 and try out some of his cymbals.  Now let me first explain something about Matt’s cymbals…They are all hand forged.

Matt’s cymbals are as much a work of art visually as they are beautiful sounding cymbals. He makes the full gambit of cymbals, crashes, rides, hi hats, orchestral, and cup chimes but he also makes “out of the ordinary” creations such as his 24” NuBat CymBat, and the up and coming InfiniTri Triangle. At NAMM, he had a cymbal/gong with the Pork Pie logo on it (he was sharing a booth with them). He even makes bronze cow bells!

Another point about Matt’s cymbals is that the bells of the cymbals are not pressed, he hand hammers the bell into the cymbal. These are truly custom, handmade cymbals that sound incredible.  Matt is putting the artwork back into making instruments because not only are they incredible sounding cymbals, they are visually beautiful to look at.

The ONLY negative to Matt Nolan Custom Cymbals is that they are a little expensive. Not so much that they are three or four times as expensive as major companies but about what you would expect for a custom, handmade cymbal.  A 16 inch Bronze Dark Crash 1137g cymbal runs about $328.00. Higher end price (Paiste Signature maybe) but not stupidly overpriced like custom drums can get.

Matt cymbals are definitely worth looking at. I nearly bought one from him at NAMM, the ONLY reason I didn’t was because my wallet said no. Someday, I WILL own a Matt Nolan custom cymbal.

I give Matt Nolan Custom Cymbals a 9 out of 10.

Check out his cymbals today!

www.mattnolancustomcymbals.com

Gibraltar Swing Nut Hardware

This is one of the products I was looking forward to at NAMM 2011.  I only had a few minutes to check it out but this is what I came up with in those few precious minutes.

Weight

First of all, the stands are made out of aluminum to be light weight, so obviously the first thing I did was to lift the stand off the ground. While it is lighter than some stands, I wouldn’t say that it’s a lot lighter than other stands. I’m used to double braced hardware weighing a ton. Yes it is lighter than a double braced boom stand with retractable cymbal arm, but compared to other stands of the same design, there really isn’t much difference in weight.

Swing Nut

This is the gem. I sat and messed with this for most of the time. I maneuvered it slowly, quickly, while looking away and it was really easy and quick to open and close once I got the hang of how it works (you have to push down THEN twist).  I can see this saving drummers a lot of time during set up and tear down. No trying to spin the wing nuts and then having to go look for them when they fly off the stand.

Tilter

The cymbal tilter worked pretty well too. There are no gears so you can literally angle the cymbal at any angle.  I know I’m pretty anal about the angle of my cymbals and often run into the gear at the ideal position…not with this. You can adjust the angle to half a hair if you so desire.

Overall this is a pretty decent product. My only concern is the durability. I have cymbal stands in my set up that are in excess of 15 years old and while they show their age, they work as well now as they did the day I bought them. It looks like these stands CAN last the as long, as long as they’re not abused.  I guess only time will tell if they will last 10 to 20 years of playing out.  I guess I’m old…if it doesn’t LOOK like it will last forever, I hesitate to believe that it will but I'm willing to give these a chance simply because the speed of setting up cymbals will greatly increase!

On a scale of 1-10, I give this an 8.

NAMM 2011

I'm heading off to NAMM this week. I'm looking for toys to review. If there's anything you know of that's coming out and want a review, let me know and I'll see if I can do one!

See ya after NAMM!

Coady Clutch Combo Winner!

Congrats to Jimmy Shand! The Random Name Selector picked Jimmy as the winner of the Coady Clutch Combo!

Jimmy! Please email me your address at timekeep69@aol.com so I can send out your prize!

Thanks to all who have supported both this blog and Billdidit!

Billdidit Coady Combo

OK, people! This is a new product that I think has great potential! The Coady Combo by Billdidit! There are actually 3 different items in the combo so I’m going to review each item and then the combo as a whole.

First The Coady Clutch – A pretty sturdy clutch. Well made and adjustable so you can tighten the felts from the top and bottom. Yes, you can adjust the tightness of the high hats with this from just sitting together to a little pressure on top for that nice “chick” sound. Without the rest of the combo, the drop part of the clutch is a little more difficult. You have to manually break the magnetic seal. With practice you can do it but that’s what makes the combo so cool….more on that in a bit.

Next is the Coady Wash Control – This is a cool little invention that allows the drummer to set his/her hi hat sound to have some “slosh” to it.  It sits between the hi hat cymbals and can be adjusted to open them to provide more “slosh.” It is adjustable for a little slosh or pretty much open hats.  The only down side to it is that it’s not something you can adjust between songs quickly in a set. Once it’s set, it’s set (unless there’s a guitar solo).

The Trip Arm – Well made. Easy to set up and use. Necessary for the hands free drop. More later.

The Coady Combo – OK, this is where it all works together to give you hands free drop. I have to say I was hesitant to believe that it would work as well as they claimed. New technology does that but knowing that magnetic work rather well in other drum products I knew that if it DOES work, it will work very well.

Out of the box, it was a little confusing to set up with no instructions but after watching the instruction video, I had it put together in a few minutes….piece of cake.  I’m sure they will be sending instructions to customers! I set it up to where I thought it was working best and started playing. Going between double bass and then open hi hat stuff….oops! It didn’t drop…..tweaked set up again….playing…..playing…..it dropped and picked up every time flawlessly! OK, now for the ultimate test, I walked away from it for a few days, when I came back I just sat down and started playing, no tweaks, adjustments or inspections….just started playing. It worked like a charm, so I started playing with the Wash control. This little thing can produce some Slosh! Back it down and it goes to hi hats resting on each other. Nice range!

The Trip Arm is what drops the clutch when you take your foot off the pedal. It’s basically a metal bar that clamps to the hi hat stand, comes up and around the hats and then rest against the Coady clutch. It cleared my 13” hats by a mile. It looks as though it was designed to clear hats up to 15”. The video say that you can “turn off” the drop by twisting the Trip Arm but when I did this while playing, it would fall out of the clamp. A negative, yes, but when you look at the broad picture of what this product is designed to do, is it really necessary to “turn” it off? I say no. The important thing is that the Trip Arm stays in the clamp while playing and dropping the clutch…THAT’S what’s important and it does it well!

Overall, this is a great product with some innovative ideas. Magnetics are making their way into the drumming world (see Drumnetics review) and opening up a lot of really cool things. I would say that the only down side to this product is that the Trip Arm is very noticeable on the hi hat stand and I know that there are some drummers out there that won’t like that but it’s good for Billdidit because any drummer who sees a drummer playing using it who has never heard of it is going to ask what it is. Merely a cosmetic thing. I know I’ll be picking up a system for myself in the near future!

This product gets an A!

Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for! I have the complete Combo system sitting here on my desk waiting to be given away to one of you! This is a value of 79.98! Here’s what you need to do!

1.       Be a follower of this blog! (If you’re reading this you probably already are)

2.       Go to http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/Billdidit and post on their wall something POSITIVE about the product and mention this blog (so I know it’s you). The names of all the people who post will go into a pool and one name will be selected by a random name selector. The winning name will be posted as a blog post on this Friday,  Jan 7^th.

Happy New Year!

I'm looking forward to reviews in 2011!!

Next review is coming up soon! This one has a giveaway!

Stay Tuned!