Cruising Sabian’s website the other day, I noticed that they are now making the Ozone in the more affordable B8 Pro line. For those of you not familiar with the Ozone cymbal, it’s basically a crash cymbal with a bunch of huge holes in it. But believe it or not, they sound pretty darn cool, almost like an extremely explosive trashy crash. The 18″ retailing at only $108, it seems like it’ll be a great deal to add some spice to your kit.
I’m not an “alloy snob” and think that B8 can sound quite good. Allot of people don’t realize nearly all of the Paistes made throughout the 70s and 80s were all made from B8 alloy.
Sabian hasn’t put a sound sample up yet, but even if they do, this is an area of Sabian’s site that needs some work. All of their audio samples sound like they’re encoded at 24 kbps or something, so they’re pretty worthless in judging sound. My feelings of the B8 Pro line is mixed in general. I had an 18″ crash that sounded great, and the Power Rock Ride (which they have discontinued for some reason) is used by Mr. Damon Che of Don Caballero, and he makes it sound damn good. However, I had a set of their medium hats once and they were the harshest and most awful sounding hi hats I’d ever played. For a while they were the only ones I had left and was forced to play them. I cringed every time I hit them, haha.
That being said, I wouldn’t just blindly order one until I could hear one in person. But they certainly have potential to be cool.
