Anyone tried "Visu-lites"?

[BINARY]

The ad says

"The new Visu-Lite Electronic Cymbals WITH RUBBER on the lower 1/3 are now available. Also, All New V-Drum compatible hi-hats. They use a real hi-hat stand and 2 electronic cymbals.
The best cymbal triggers on the market today!"

Anyone tried these or heard if they're quality?
They seem a little pricey for something I probably can't try in a store first.

Sorry if any similar posts are elsewhere. I didn't remember anything about these, and didn't see any.

BINARY
[email protected]

[Paul Ip]

Binary,

I just bought 1300B RHC 100 Hi-Hats, and 1800B Ride Cymbal (in beautiful transparent florescent green acrylic) from Tom Tickard of Visu-Lite for a few weeks and I love them very much. It took me a while to totally figure out how to assemble the Hi-Hats. The instruction sheet that came with the Hi-Hats is helpful but I wish it comes with pictures for better illustration purpose. After correctly adjusting the Hi-Hats controller unit, the Hi-Hats just work like ordinary acoustic ones, way much better than Pintech's SE-102 dual zone pad (SE-102 is already very good but it requires a little more hitting efforts, just like other rubber pads, it is chokable too). In Visu-Lite's 1300B RHC 100 Hi-Hats, the rim shot is triggered from the bell portion though. The 1800B also does its job well but you have to hit the bell real hard to trigger the bell sounds or else it will only trigger regular ride cymbal sounds. Visu-Lite cymbals are noticeably quieter than the Pintech TC series cymbals. My next purchase will probably be their chokable crash 1650.

Visu-Lite cymbals are really visually appealing cymbals - the transparent florescent green acrylic cymbals almost look as if they glow under normal household lighting when viewed from the side. The transparent blue also looks great on the web site. Price wise they are very expensive especially the new Hi-Hats, but they are the only ones that I know of that actually work like the real Hi-Hats. I use stereo cables for the hook up of these cymbals to Roland TD-8 module and they work together as expected. I am glad that I have waited for almost six weeks for these newer cymbals with rubber on the lower 1/3 (I hate doing the glue work for the rubber patches).

Paul Ip
from Texas

[mikkola]

A little trick:

try to choke the Visu-Lite crash from the paint strips with WET fingers! At least mine works this way nicely with TD-10. Of course this is not very practical tip - it's not nice to spit you fingers constantly!

The pad setting I use is PD-7.

I think the problem with choking has something to do with sensitivity of the choke function (short circuiting of the trigger); if it just could be tweaked...

[BINARY]

I think I may pick up the HiHat set when I pay off my Mastercard a lil bit more. That's mostly what I'm interested in.
The HiHat setup--can I use my own stand for that?
What I'm thinking is using a remote HiHat that I can clamp onto my VDrums rack so I don't have a standard HiHat stand getting in the way of everything.
They don't tell you much on their website, it's a pretty dismal place if you want real information.
Thanks for all of the replies. I'm definately going to look into this product further.

Binary
[email protected]

[sector7]

Anyone care to add their latest reviews on the Visu-lite Cymbals. I've heard they track really well?
Also heard some mixed comments of the stick noise - some posts say they're very quiet, others say very loud????
I can't imagine them being very loud with 3/16'" gum rubber on an acrylic cymbal.

I'm looking into getting the following:

1300B RHC 100 ($195.95 including foot controller box)


This is the flourescent green china ($69.95)

What I want to see is some full size photos of these cymbals in Gold - Anyone got or seen these cymbals in this colour?

Hey BINARY - Did you ever purchase these things?

[This message has been edited by sector7 (edited January 31, 2001).]

[BtnkBndt]

Visu-Lites are great. They trigger flawlessly. Stick noise is louder than the pd7's/9's though. On my ride I had to give two inputs to gain the bell trigger. If set properly you get full positional.

I also added the aquarian springs to the crashes because you have to really tighten them down to stop them from spinning (Harts come with them wish Visu-Lite would add them). They are now making them chokable on the TD8/10.

The hats are really neat and really loud (clop clop clop, everyone I've heard that has used them relates this to a horse trot). I also had to enlarge the hole on the lower cymbal to end a piezo cover tapping problem and a wire chewing problem. They might have fixed this though, I had an early set. I've found it nice to have the feel of my acoustic stand and pedal though. The module for the pedal function uses a 100k pot whereas the Roland I believe uses a 25k, this makes the inbetween sound a bit smaller but I've gotten used to it myself.

Personally I really have enjoyed them all.

[This message has been edited by BtnkBndt (edited January 30, 2001).]

[sector7]

I emailed visu-lite as to why they used the 100k POT instead of 25K and they gave me a pretty good reason:

QUOTE:
"The 100K pot was selected due to the fact that Roland doesn't have a parameter to adjust the sounds for your particular style
except for in their pedal, where it always uses the full length of the resistor. If we used a 25K, you would have either a 2" open hi-hat to even get the full open sound or a non open sound for your open position. Our
selection was made to give many different styles and variables to all. We feel that this gives a much more realistic feel/sound to the physics that actually goes on with a pair of hi-hats."

Sounds pretty reasonable to me
I only ever have my hats open about 5mm anyway.

Also in a different post I've heard of people placing a small ring of felt between the Hi-Hats which silences them - Btnkbndt - why don't you try that?
I'de like to know how quiet they really are after doing that.

[BINARY]

I saw this post and I was like...**** I posted this a long time ago....

No, I never ended up getting these. I've been focusing on other things, my mini-PA for one.

I'm not sure where I am in an actual band situation, but if I were to play out, I'd pick them up by the time I played out. They would be more for visual effect, and I'd just get the two crash cymbals, probably not the ride or the HH.

Somewhere in my future lies the Visu-Lites, and I'll definately share experiences/opinions if and when I ever get them.

BnktBndt -
Would it be possible to put some felt or glue a lil piece of rubber around the rim, so when the hats close, they don't "clop?"
Can you post a pic? I'd love to see those bad boys....


BINARY

[BINARY]

I just hit your site, cool pics, a little hard to see the visulites. So you got the black ones, huh? I was thinking of the flourescent green. Put some black shelf paper around the Vs, so I just got the old black and green. That would look wacky, huh?

Maybe run a tiny light under the bell, so live it looks like it's glowing....

[BINARY]

Going for the record of 'posts in a row,'

One last question....

why do you care if they spin?

Do you need to hit them on that little pie-wedge-shaped thingy?

~BIN

[sector7]

The pie wedge shaped thingy is the 1/3 section of soft rubber 3/16" thick for silencing the stick noise.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe these cymbals will still trigger the same whether you hit the rubber section or the hard Acrylic surface, the benefit in having them not spin would ensure you always hit the quiet spot (one reason why most of us went to E-Drums).

Btnkbndt I think has a version of these cymbals from over a year ago when they didn't have a quiet rubber section on them - so he made his own rubber pad up for it.

Hey BINARY> Didn't you do it all for the Nookie??
(Like the song from the band that dunked their scotch finger biscuit in their tea for too long)

Otherwise it must be a bloody good Cookie.

[This message has been edited by sector7 (edited January 31, 2001).]

[roya]

Any idea where i can try these cymbals in boston?

[BtnkBndt]

I use alot of the pintechs scattered around so black was the only option I had if I wanted to match. I will try the felt and let you know how it works out, they come with a rubber ring already.

You want to prevent spinning mainly to keep the cables from wrapping your stands. Also you want the choking area to be accessable. Not really positive what they are using for choke, I had mine before they were TD10 compatable and had to modify.

All you people wanting colored V's need to talk to these guys. If I had thier abilities with acrylics I would be making replacement acrylic shells for the V's. Wouldnt that be cool!

Roya,
You will have to give them a call. They had a shop that sold them about 2hours from Dallas, maybe you will get lucky?

[fjmar99]

This was a very good and informative post seeing that I had plenty of questions about the visu-lites. My only question is how would you guys rate these against the Hart Ecymbals (the metal looking ones)? I'm wanting to get either one of these but can't really make a decision yet.

Thanks for any replies/advice/suggestions,
FJMAR

[BINARY]

Hey all

Sector7 -
Check the spoof of the "nookie" song done by the cookie monster. It's hysterical. It's on napster, under "cookie monster"

roya, where are you in boston?

BIN