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.