KG Cymbal Blast Rim

Hi guys! I’m going on vacation tomorrow to sunny San Diego, CA so I am posting this weeks review a little early!

This is for the KG Cymbal Blast Rim. This product is brought to you by the Billdidit, the makers of The Coady Clutch! It’s mainly for the death metal drummers out there but I can see it being used elsewhere. Everyone has heard of the one handed drum roll right? In the metal drumming community it is referred to as the one handed blast beat. It’s a technique that uses the rim of the snare drum as a fulcrum  to play a drum roll/blast beat with one hand. Well, the people at Billdidit asked themselves “How about being able to do that on a cymbal?” And the Cymbal Blast Rim was born.

 Now I don’t have the technical abilities to play one handed rolls/blast beats so I enlisted the help of my friend Matt McKasty, drummer for the brutal metal band Warfear. Below is his unedited review of the product.

“Today I will be reviewing the KG Cymbal Blast Rim made by Billdidit. The KG Cymbal Blast Rim is a product designed to enable a player to apply the freehand technique to one or more of their cymbals as opposed to just their drums. For those of you who don't know what the "freehand technique" is, it is when the player uses the rim of the drum a fulcrum on the center of the stick to get even single strokes with one hand using a see-saw motion. It is also commonly referred to as a "gravity blast". The KG Cymbal Blast Rim represents a small section of counter-hoop just like the one you would find on your drums, which threaded to mount on any standard 8mm cymbal post. When mounted in front of a cymbal it gives you a fulcrum point to execute the technique just as you would on your snare. You can use is on any of your cymbals, but I found it to be intrusive on anything other than the ride cymbal. I can see it being used off to the left of the hats and being played with the left hand as well, but anywhere else it seemed to get in the way of my playing. When positioned in front of the ride cymbal the piece worked surprisingly well. It didn't encumber my ability to play around the kit and it allowed me to play clean one handed rolls on my ride with little effort. I sometimes use my floor tom rim to do this, (which is really only possible because of how low my ride sits in proximity) but having a rim exactly where I need it in front of the cymbal made it much more comfortable and practical. The only issue I ran into with the KG Cymbal Blast Rim is that it must be threaded all the way down onto the post to be stable, so you cannot twist it on the post. This isn't a huge issue being that it is designed to mount on a separate stand which can be rotated in itself, but I used the product on a boom arm that I clamped to my ride stand and it created a small issue, though nothing that can't be solved by the implementation of a small counter-nut on the cymbal post. All in all I have to say the KG Cymbal Blast Rim functions exactly as it was intended to. It may be impractical for some, but the bottom line is it works. If you want to be able to apply the freehand technique to your ride cymbal, but can’t because your ride doesn’t have a rim, this product may very well be the answer.”

The KG Cymbal Blast Rim runs 15.95.

For more info, go to www.billdidit.ca.

Until next time!