Rock Band 2 Double Cymbal Expansion Kit

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List Price: $29.99
Sale Price: $19.23
Today's Bonus: 36% Off

These do add a new dimension to the rock band drums. It does feel a little more like playing a real drum kit. So far, in the last 3 weeks, these have performed well as far as only dropping a note once in a while (you get what you pay for right?).

These are insanely loud man! It's like CRACK, CRACK, CRACK when you hit them. They're louder than the rock band 1 drums and not NEARLY as quiet as the rock band 2 drums. That is a major CON for me.

When my friends and I get together to play rock band 2 these are totally distracting to everybody else in the room, unless you play in a house and not an apartment where you can just blast the volume, that would be nice.

My solution was to put 1/4" neoprene material on the hitting part of these cymbals. It is a marked improvement. They have not lost any sensitivity and are now about as quiet as the rock band 2 drums. If you're going to use these that is a great solution. I bought a roll of this neoprene to pad a poker table I was upgrading and I used some of the leftover. By the way, you can get enough neoprene to cover these for like 5 on ebay.

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I recently purchased this add-on for the Rock Band 2 Drum Set. Over all I really like it. I believe it lends to a more enjoyable/realistic playing experience.

Some Pros: You get two cymbals which is nice and fills out the drum set with out making it too cluttered (Which is why I opted for two instead of three). When you use the freestyle drum trainer, the cymbals work just like cymbals while all the pads act just like drums which is kinda cool. You do have some options as to the height and location of the cymbals. The response seems to be good and I haven't had any problems with them not registering hits. They do appear to be velocity sensitive also meaning the harder you hit the louder the sound in the game.

A Con: The initial setup is kind of tough. You basically get a two piece plastic clamp that you use to secure the cymbal "pole" to the rest of the drum set. The clamp snaps together in two places and then you have little "wing-nut" bolts you use to tighten everything down securely. Those "wing-nut" bolts are hard to use because the distance from the place you screw in the "wing-nut" bolt to the hole it goes in, is kinda far. SO you have to squeeze on the clamp to get the bolt in there. Maybe is was just my setup but I don't think a child would be able to do it on their own.

Other then that I am enjoying this addition to my gaming experience.

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Overall these are a great expansion to your Rock Band 2 drumkit (they don't work at all with Rock Band 1 Drums). The cymbals seem to be solidly made and can withstand some decent beating. I agree with the previous review about the set up being somewhat difficult. You need to be careful to put the wingnut in before clicking the two pieces together. But once everything is on they are very stable and feel like a normal part of the kit.

Game-wise they make for some nice playing in rock band. The cymbals take over two of the colors and you choose which by choosing which plug on the back of the kit. The caps on the cymbals can be changed depending on which color you are using them as. When you plug them in for rock band the cymbals become cymbal sounds while the pads they replace become toms.

These also work with Guitar Hero World Tour. However, it should be noted that you probaly want Yellow and Blue with World Tour while you probably want Yellow and Green with Rock Band because of the way you kick off star power. That means some annoying switching and a bit of confusion after switching if you only get the 2 cymbal kit. I kind of wish I woulda gotten the three just to avoid that.

But they definitely make drumming more fun, more immersive, and more difficult if you want it to be since you can now play a cymbal when it calls for one rather than just another pad. Some Madcatz stuff is a little hokey but these are legit.

4/5 docking one for initial setup and annoying switching of colors

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First off, I believe these cymbals fantastic. It makes it feel more realistic and significantly easier to play.

That being said, I initially noticed the same annoying "plastic" sound when I started using the cymbals. I tried putting Rock Band Drum Silencers on the top of the cymbal, like someone suggested, but the sound was still there. I tried tightening the colored wingnuts and that still didn't help. After analyzing the cymbals a little more, I noticed the "plastic" sound was coming from the housing on the underside of the cymbal. The noise was created from the hard plastic housing hitting the hard plastic on the body of the cymbal. Once I realized that, I knew inserting a rubber-like gasket would fix the problem.

To fix the plastic noise:

1. Unscrew the four small screws holding down the plastic housing

2. Cut up a small rectangle of the Rock Band Drum Silencers or mousepad-material (about 0.5" x 3")

3. On the side nearest the cymbal hitting zone, placed the material between the edge of the housing and the body of the cymbal. You do not need to adhere the material to the surface using tape or glue, because the screws will secure it in the next step.

4. Then replace the 4 screws, snuggly squishing the material.

Note: You'll notice the housing won't completely screw down flush with the surface, but that's good since you're preventing the two surfaces from hitting each other, while having a rubber-like material damping the shock.

I've been using the cymbals with this mod for about 6 months with no problems. Now my cymbals are about as quiet as the rest of the drum kit.

I hope this helps someone.

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Fixing the cymbal slippage problem-

This is for those of you who are experiencing the problem of the poles that support the cymbals slipping down in the clamps: I had this problem at first, but the corrective is fairly simple and actually is in the directions. It's hard to interpret on the graphic, but what you need to do is to mount the clamps to the drum set, without the cymbal poles in their holes. Then you have to squeeze the two halves (right/left)that make up the clamp together in the middle as hard as you can (I used pliers) until they snap together completely. You'll know it's right when you hear the "snap" as indicated in the directions and the gap between the two halves is totally gone. Then you can insert the cymbal poles and tighten the wing nuts on both ends. If the two halves aren't snapped together, the clamps can't get tight enough to hold the pole in place. Of course, designing a smooth plastic pole to fit into a smooth plastic clamp probably isn't the best idea, but hey...

For the review-

I'm a long-time drummer that bought this kit to make the decidedly unrealistic RB2 drums get a little more realistic. They do allow you to add the positioning of real cymbals, to a degree. Unfortunately, they lack any realistic flexibility for placement. You can basically rotate them a little side-to-side, based on which pole they're attached to and you can move them up and down, but that's it. You can't place one in the traditional high hat location, to the left of the snare, or to the far right of the drums where you'd normally have a ride cymbal. Adding some sort of boom setup to one of the cymbals would help with this problem. it's also the main reason I didn't buy the 3-cymbal setup, since you couldn't put them in the typical spots for most drummers. The other omission is a lack of a tilting mechanism for the cymbal surface itself. Few drummers like their cymbals perfectly horizontal, but that's pretty much what you get here. That makes doing a ride pattern on the shoulder (top) surface of the cymbal difficult. It's ok for crashes, but doing a sustained ride on the cymbal's edge feels awkward because of the way the cymbals rebound. Along that lines, the "feel" of these cymbals is ok if you can get the right amount of tightness on the wingnuts holding the cymbal down. Too loose and the rebound goes to zero. And yes, these are lounder than the new RB2 drums, especially when you have to play on the edge all the time.

While these comments may make it sound like I don't care for the cymbals, I am actually very glad I bought them. They do add a degree of realism when playing the game, especially when I reach up to hit the crash without thinking about it, rather than going down to the lower right drum pad. They smartly added the feature where the cymbal pads act as cymbals all the time, but the drum pads go either way, just as they do in the absence of the cymbals. That means you can hit the right note (i.e. a crash) either on the pad or the cymbal and not be wrong. The nice thing is that during the fill and rock ending parts, the cymbals sound only as cymbals and the drum pads only as drums, making more complicated fills possible.