Taming Cymbals during rehearsal

[Coque]

Hi All,

I am moving from a fairly big house to a much smaller home in about a month. The problem is, I have been spoiled for years having rehearsal in the middle of my living room. My current living room has 18 foot ceilings, is a good 20 feet wide and housed a full library with over a thousand books lining the walls. This proved a wonderful place to play. However, now I've got to move all my operations to a spare bedroom. I'm working onthe design of the room and have bass traps and first reflections resonators to tame to the room a little, but I am really concerned about cymbals.

In the big room, cymbals were no problem. However, every time we rehearsed in a small room, the general concensus was that we were all going to go deaf because of the bright cymbals. I have played with one band that solved the problem with an electronic kit, which sounded great but cost the guy over $6k and that did not include the huge backline of amps to make it sound good. That's took much of an investment.
Do any of you have any good ideas on how to tame the cymbals in a small room?

[curtisstetka]

Google "cymbal mute". There are a lot of options. Never used any myself, but it looks like there are things out there.

[Coque]

Thanks! I found some on Amazon made by Zildjian. Any of you all have any experience with them?

[curtisstetka]

I suppose you could also invest in a drum shield thinger. Throw a bunch of foam or blankets or something up on the wall behind the drum set and then put the shield in front of it.

I'd guess the cymbal mute does something to the "feel" of the cymbal that a drummer might not dig. Most drummers would probably just whack the darn things even harder to get the volume back to where they want it. :)

[boobtube21]

Are you guys wearing earplugs? I would be in a smaller room (I do in every type of room these days).

In any case I think smaller/lighter cymbals should cut back on the volume a little.

[bonefish]

would it be a silly solution to just ask your drummer to take it easy on the brass?