Pulse Pro 5 piece review part 2

Continuing with the review, lets now take a gander at the hardware and cymbals that accompanied this set.

The set comes with Pulse 14 hi hats, 16 crash and 18 crash/ride.

First, the 14 hi hats.


Closed, these things are almost silent. They are kinda gross sounding, and really lack that good 'chick' sound we all want. Open these puppies up, and its like you have a new set of cymbals! When open, they are very bright and ring out with a decent decay. Its almost strange, because they are very nice sounding open, but horrible closed. These can be replaced, but if your on a budget, most drummers can live with them. I can, and they were one of the last things I replaced.


Next, the crash.

Another thing that surprised me is how much I enjoy this cymbal! This crash, which is STILL part of my current set up, crashed loud, is nice and in the middle, and the decay is short, but not too short. It sounds great and doesnt over power, even when I ride on it. Surprisingly, I play metal on this cymbal, and after 2 years of slamming on it, it hasnt broke, is just barely, almost unnoticeable warped, and really, just has some stick marks and thats it. Hasnt lost any sound, and is amazing for a cymbal that was FREE!


Finally, the crash/ride


To be honest, I dont like crash/rides. To me, they are just too washy to be rides, and too low and loud to be crashes. But I must review, so here I go. As a ride, like I said, it is pretty washy, but the bell is pretty nice. Remember, this was FREE with the set. As a crash, this thing is loud and loooow, sometimes, it almost sounds good as this low roaring cymbal, but the decay seems like days and just doesnt work for fast paced music like metal. It washes out everything else and just gets rather annoying. Playing it like a ride is alright, it does resound loud enough to be heard, and isnt too pingy, but just not pingy enough.


Now lets talk about hardware.

The pedal.

I have no pic because the piece that held the beater to the pedal, what I thought was metal, broke. Unbelievably cheap. MUST be replaced with a double kick. Almost pathetic how cheap it is.

Stands.



Well, the straight stand and the boom stand are decent, but the wing nuts that hold your cymbal on it, well I have no pic of those because they are plastic and shattered. I dont mean broke in half, i mean, just exploded.



Finally, the hi hat stand.


Yes, that is tape. The nut right there that holds the lower hi hat cymbal up striped almost a week after I got it. Oh yea, that sucks out loud. This is rather poor and will be another thing that should be replaced right away.


The cymbals themselves can be surprisingly good considering that they are FREE with the set. I was rather impressed, they actually sound better than Sabian B8s and Solars. To be honest, if you get new cymbals, you could keep the crash as a second crash and use the crash/ride as an effect cymbal. They are built tough and have taken 2 years of my metal thrashing.

I wish I could say the same for the hardware. It is seriously poor and almost pathetic. The stand wing nuts are a joke, the hi hat stand is almost useless, and the snare stand wobbles more than the cymbals do! Spend money on new hardware and you should have a decent set.

Overall, with this set, new heads and hardware and youd have an impressive set that could revival some entry level pearl and mapex. This set is greatly under appreciated and, take it from me, with a little bit of time and effort, this set will sound awesome.

Cymbal rating (1-10) - 7.5 - Im taking a leap with this rating, but 2 years of metal with little to no damage backs it up.

Hardware rating (1 - 10) - 3 - Id put 2 or 1, fortunately, the stands still actually stand up, witch is surprising.

Overall average rating - 6 + 7.5 + 3 / 3 = 5.5 - Had the hardware been better, this set would be a decent competitor.