Volume is very manageable. I would describe it as just under the threshold of uncomfortable or the point of needing hearing protection. You would have to raise your voice a bit to be heard over it, but you would be heard and could have a conversation while playing it. (Vs the volume of a regular ride cymbal where they would mostly just see your lips moving)
A decent bit quieter than most flat rides. Significantly quieter than any normal ride.
There were a couple of roughly drilled holes and the holes themselves are not perfectly evenly spaced over the whole cymbal. However the bronze feels reassuringly solid & i doubt it would crack too easily. (typical Zultan here: quality forging but a bit hit and miss on the finish)
It's definitely on the heavy side even for a 22 and the bow is very thick. There very little in the way of flex when played and it can be a little slow to "wake up" when playing very gently (but then it is a 22"). Typical heavy cymbal behavior in that sense I guess.
Maple sticks make an even bigger difference than usual....Think in terms of how a flat ride behaves but even more so. Stick noise becomes extra prominent. Maple sticks with round wood tips just sound significantly better than any of my my acorn tipped Hickories on this thing.
Sound wise: It is undoubtedly night and day better than almost all other reduced volume cymbals. It is also undoubtedly louder than almost all other LV cymbals too.
The bell is also quite loud when played with the shank. As such this cymbal would definitely not be suitable for midnight blast beat practice.
However...my next door neighbor still doesn't know i have a drum kit after several months of playing Heavy Metal stuff....so the sound clearly doesn't travel any worse than a set of arbiter flats.
Unless you have very thin walls, it should be suitable for most kinds of home practice.
I would describe the sound itself as like hearing a heavily EQ'd regular cymbal. Like most of the mids have been scooped out. There is wash that builds, but its a very rumbling low frequency wash.
It feels unfair to compare it to a normal ride cymbal, but there is definitely a sense that something missing....until you realize it's already been predrilled for rivets!
And you don't even need proper rivets! You can experiment by hanging anything that will fit through the holes, of which there are 100's in all sorts of places cymbals don't usually have holes!
I've settled on just one copper rivet near the edge, but i found a bunch of other interesting sounds messing about with this. (Screws/bolts around the bell create a weird haunting sound that makes me imagine ghostly steel girders sliding across rollers or something)
Anyway. +1 or 2 rivets in the usual spot makes this thing feel really close to a proper riveted jazz ride, just that bit quieter. Almost all the lack of sustain and mids gets filled out by the sizzle.
The edge is crashable, but it's not the sort of crash sound you'd want in place of a regular crash. (I also have a Mellow 18" Ride which isn't a terribly good ride cymbal, but works far better as a regular crash)
Somewhere between gongy and crashy. It can work as a secondary crash, but you probably wouldn't want to run it solo.
If it wasn't so expensive I might have marked it higher. But given someone clearly drilled every single one of those holes one at a time, I guess I can understand why.
I did fall in love with the thing eventually. But it took rivets and maple sticks to get me there.
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