A quick trick here for the drummers who hit the cymbals hard but don’t want to spend a ton of cash replacing the ones that break. Try to swish your cymbals instead of hitting them. It means that instead of going full dead on, you hit them “sideways” if I may say. A little bit like Ringo Star was playing his ride with a swing motion of the wrist. I used to have 2 very little and very fragile (Yet very expensive) splash cymbals: 8″ and 10″. I cracked those guys more times than I can count. Then I met a drummer who told me to never hit them dead on, but to “brush them” with the stick instead, and it helped a lot to save the thin metal from cracking.
While I’m at it, and because this blog would have been too short if it was just the saving cymbals topic, here’s a trick to set up a drum set faster: draw on your carpet. That’s right! you take a big ol’ sharpie and you scribble 2 black dots where your bass drum spurs are. Do the same for the hi hat: that’ll be 3 dots and the outline of the sole of the hi hat pedal. Continue with your snare stand and your cymbal stand(s) and finish with your floor tom(s). It means that once you take your hardware out of the bag at the gig and you lay your little carpet down, you know EXACTLY where you’re going to put all your gear. Guessing is what cost time and effort. And, since I see you still have that sharpie in your hand, you can draw a line on the tubes of your cymbal stands right where they enter into the other tube. That’ll make sure you always have your cymbals at the same height.
I’ve got a million other tricks but, that’s a good size blog, I’ll try to share more later.