20" Caz Ride : Zultan 20” Caz Ride Cymbal

I am an amateur percussionist and purchased this along with the Caz 14” hi-hat and snare to lay down some jazzy-feel rhythm backing for home recording as well as embellishing some conga / latin based rhythms. This cymbal has met all my expectations – it has a really nice hand hammered finish with a lovely range of tones and response across its surface with a shimmering sustain. It is widely responsive to sticks, hot-rods and brushes – my personal favourite with hot-rods with which you can achieve a very wide variety of responses, all of which are nicely consistent which gives you great confidence when playing. The bell is nice and shallow which for me provides the perfect tone alongside the other sounds across the surface. The cymbal responds well when crashed so if you were toying between a larger crash cymbal or a ride, this may suit. The cymbal also has a fantastic bloom when played with a felt stick. I did consider the ‘sizzle’ version of this cymbal which looks and sounds excellent from what I understand, though I did want the flexibility of no sizzle so have matched this with a Pro Mark chain-sizzler. I did I initially struggle to get a decent sustain with this sizzle, though experimenting with the pitch of the cymbal and how you lay the chain (straight or slightly coiled) can improve this greatly. If you are going to use ‘sizzle’ a lot or all the time or have a large range of cymbals I would definitely seriously consider the ‘sizzle’ version of the Caz ride range. Not being a drummer I have no great experience of cymbals, I do however think this is a super cymbal for lighter playing such as some lighter touch jazz / blues, this is perfect and won’t break the bank.