There's nothing wrong with a little dirt on your cymbals, it all adds to the character, right? Well, that certainly is one school of thought, but excess dirt and grime on your cymbals can have a detrimental effect on their sound, and they look absolutely horrendous.
The same can be said for your kit, shells covered in mucky fingerprints is not a good look. Hence Music Nomad producing this pair of products, its Cymbal Cleaner and Drum Detailer.
Build
We are sent two bottles, one of the Cymbal Cleaner and one Drum Detailer. Both bottles contain 240ml of cleaner each.
"Gently working it in, our cloth quickly becomes black as we lift away years of grime"
The Cymbal Cleaner claims to protect, polish and restore your battered old metals, while the Detailer is designed to clean and protect cymbals or drums, as well as removing fingerprints and dust from both. The Cymbal Cleaner is acid free, while the Drum Detailer contains no oils.
Hands on
We start with the Cymbal Cleaner, digging out some truly filthy old cymbals - a 16" brilliant finish Sabian crash and an 18" natural finish Stagg. The brilliant finish is up first as we aim to make the finish er... really brilliant.
Applying a small amount of the cleaner, as directed, straight onto the cymbal and then gently working it in, our cloth quickly becomes black as we lift away years of grime. A great result, but unfortunately our possibly over-exuberant buffing has also removed a patch of the Sabian logo.
Onto the Stagg and the results aren't quite as striking. The cymbal definitely looks better for it, but there's still a fair old layer of dirt that will not budge. Mixed results for both cymbals.
When testing the Drum Detailer we find that it is less effective on our metals than the dedicated Cymbal Cleaner (as perhaps we should have expected), so we quickly move on to applying it to our kit.
We in fact put it through its paces on a decades-old, rehearsal room-battered piano black Pearl Export. It makes light work of the thin layer of dust covering the shells (but then again so would a feather duster), and makes decent inroads into the fingerprints and dirt that the drums have accumulated down the years.
Again, the kit looks better for it, but it's still not completely sparkling. Maybe our drums are just too darn dirty!
