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.