Tips on Crash Cymbals for Drum Sets

Video Transcript

"SHAUN SCHAEFER: Hi, I'm Shaun Schaefer on behalf of Expert Village. And today, we're going to learn how to set up a drum kit. All the drums are set up; all the stands are set up. Let's put some brass on these stands. We're going to start with the hi-hat. And this crash cymbal--that go over here. And remember when I said about using your thighs and other body parts, put that bad boy between your legs. And this is the hi-hat clutch. You gotta take that off, put the bottom hi-hat on the post, and then we're going to take this, unscrew it and put it through the top hi-hat cymbal and tighten it real good, then slide this down the post as well. Now, the crash cymbal--now, I have three different sizes of crash cymbals. This one is a 16-inch, and I always have my smaller cymbals on my left-hand side. So if I'm sitting behind the drum kit, that's my left-hand side. So the smaller cymbal is going to go right here. Loosen the wing knot, take off the felt, make sure there's a felt on the bottom. Go ahead and put the cymbal on, felt back on top and tighten the wing knot. Now, a key part is this wing knot. You want it tight, so the cymbal doesn't come off, but you don't want it so tight to where the cymbal can't move. So this--the cymbal has free reign to move in any which direction it needs to move. Now, if it is tight and this doesn't move very much, what's going to happen is you're going to break your cymbal pretty easily."