Floor Toms sound better on air feet,...Bass drums sound better off the floor,...Maybe cymbals sound better hanging than on a stand,..Mine are deep burried and if I decide to take one out,...I`ll check !!

Never thought of it though !!

Sounds to me like a bunch of hooey.

Other than felt material and the tightness of the wing nut, the only reason I can see is the rubber feet on the stand.

The new (and way overpriced, I might add) Ludwig Hardware has "floating" rubber feet. It might isolate the stand more than usual, allowing the cymbal to vibrate more freely, much like the floor tom floating feet.

However, on a cymbal, the difference would be virtually undetectable, I would think. If it vibrates slightly longer, it would be at the end of it's "vibration duration", when the sound is very soft anyway. Plus, I think it would only make a difference on very heavy rides.

Think about it, if you wanted to dampen or control the overtones of a certain cymbal, and you had 2 choices, would you:

A. Place a bit of tape, moongel etc. on the cymbal, or use thick neoprene pads (like Cympads) in lieu of felts or

B. Wrap up the cymbal stand in a blanket?

I think we would all choose A, for obvious reasons.

Just my 2.7 cents (inflation adjusted).

Manufacturer marketing never ceases to amaze me.

I have never seen a Manufacturer claim such effects that stands have on cymbal sounds.....and I understand that the new Luddy HW features feet that are designed as such purely for legs to over/under -lap each other.

John

In my experience most of the impact from stands is negative and due to condition or the way the stands are set up ... especially drummers using lots of clamps off the same base or stands that should be repaired or retired. Common sense stuff.

Depending on the situation and the individual cymbal, one stand can be better than another. In general if you have a stand that is appropriate for the style and size of the cymbal and in good condition the gain of going to anything super premium would not be worth it ... my opinion. For my $500, I'd spend >$400 of it on the cymbal and <$100 on the stand.

If I had an unlimited budget I'd probably get more impact from hiring someone better than me to play themMind Blowi.

A few years back I did some recordings with my Zoom H4, same room, same stick, same cymbal, same felt, not top felt or wing nut, same recording position, same playing pattern at the same force (as much as I could) and trying to document a difference between having a boom stand extended and a straight stand (the stand is one of those designs where you can hide the boom down inside the top tube and turn it into a straight stand). Using my ears it seemed like having a boom stand with a long extension was resonating with the cymbal making for a change in the sound. I couldn't pick anything in the recordings.

In a similar controlled fashion (at least the best I can manage -- I'm a scientist by day) I've found that felt size does make a small difference going from one which is quite a small diameter one to a great big one. Smaller felt = more bell = more high frequencies in the mix. Similarly putting a large top felt on reduces the bell. But these are teeny tiny changes and would be lost in the music.

The reason I was doing these things is I have a "problem" cymbal which has some high frequency build up which I was starting to find displeasing. You can hear it by clicking on the sound file at http://black.net.nz/drums/

When a few others listened to this recording they decided that I have the "problem" not the cymbal. I'm being overly sensitive.

What I have discovered is that whether or not the cymbal sound changes seems to depend on the individual cymbal. I've got some which seem to be slightly (these are all slight effects again, lost in the music or from the audience listening distance) affected by changing

slope from closer to horizontal to closer to vertical

felts

tape

stick tip (and general diameter)

Given what I've found so far I'd say it is possible that those who say certain stand attributes change cymbal sound may be right. And those who say certain stand attributes don't change the cymbal sound are also right. And the difference between these situations? Different cymbals, as well as different everything else. But from my experiments different cymbals is enough (all on its own) to account for almost all these different experiences.

Individual cymbal variation certainly doesn't rule out the effect of different stands in certain situations either. I had quite obvious sonic effects from clamping a 12" boom to the tom holder on a 10/13FT/15 microkit. I was trying to save carrying a cymbal stand (as one does) but the results were not pleasing to my ear. Too much resonance between the 10" tom and the cymbal.

I had a somewhat similar situation as your last point.

I had a splash mounted on my bass drum with the two toms and when I hit my bass, it resonated through the stand and splash. Very annoying!

I had to rearrange things and run the splash off another stand because although it would also be lost in the music, it really bothered me...

so if that is the case...then the 18" ride/crash i have on the yellow stand [Attachment: 53592] would sound like a shop lite clicking on or off ??? Walking

not trying to be a smartazz, just trying to be funny.

as far as the stand making a difference i really don't think it does. this cymbal sounded the same no matter what stand i had it on.

Unless a cymbal is completely decoupled from the stand, it can cause the stand to vibrate. In this case, the problem is not a matter of decoupling the stand from the floor. If the vibration of the cymbal excites the cymbal stand's resonant frequency, then the stand might vibrate loudly enough to be audible. I didn't read the Ludwig spiel, but the only way to solve this problem would be to either decouple the cymbal from the stand, or apply a dampening material to the stand to eliminate the resonant frequency mode.

I agree with others that, while it can be annoying, it's unnoticed by most.