Best Cymbals for Beginners on a Budget
The worst money on a beginner kit goes to the free cymbal pack bundled with the shells. Those pressed discs are the reason a brand-new set sounds like pots and pans — and you can fix it for less than the price of one lesson, if you buy in the right order: one honest crash first, hats second, ride last.
How we chose these
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Our criteria, in order: does it sound like a cymbal rather than a trash-can lid, will it survive a beginner's stick for a few years, and does it cost as little as possible. We rank by sound and durability first. Some links on this page earn us a small commission, and that has no effect on the order — every pick here is one we would give a student.
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The dividing line in cymbals is not price, it is process. Cheap cymbals are stamped from sheet metal and cut to shape. Better cymbals are cast from a bronze alloy, rolled, hammered and lathed. That difference is audible the moment you tap one: sheet bronze produces a clang with no sustain, while cast bronze rings with a defined pitch that fades.
For a beginner, the goal is not a professional sound. The goal is a cymbal that responds when you hit it softly, does not sound the same at every volume, and gives you a pitch you can actually hear. That is a lower bar than people think — and it is a bar the bundled free pack fails.
The picks at a glance
- Best overall: Zildjian I Series — a cast bronze cymbal line that behaves like a real cymbal for beginner money.
- Best complete pack: Meinl HCS — the cheapest way to replace an entire terrible set at once.
- Best step-up: Sabian B8X — brighter and louder, for pop and rock players who want cut.
- Best single upgrade: Paiste PST 5 — one crash that will make you want to play more.
- Best used pro cymbal: any used Zildjian A or Sabian AA — the smartest $120 a beginner can spend.
- Best for quiet practice: Zildjian L80 Low Volume — real bronze feel at apartment volume.
- Skip entirely: brass "starter" packs, cymbal-shaped sheet bronze, and anything sold in a plastic bag with your name-brand drum kit.
The picks, in detail
Zildjian built this line specifically to replace the junk that ships with kits, and it worked. It is cast from the same family of bronze as the pro lines, so it responds to dynamics instead of just getting loud. If you can only buy one thing for your kit, buy the crash from this line and thank yourself later.
What works
- Sounds like a cymbal at every volume
- Survives being hit by a beginner
- Resale value holds far better than sheet bronze
- Sits in a mix without dominating it
What doesn’t
- Not cheap per cymbal, and you need at least two
- Nothing like the darkness of the top lines
- Some sizes are hard to find used
Buy it if you want a cymbal you will still enjoy in two years. Skip it if your whole budget is under $60.
If your kit came with four cymbals and every one of them is painful, the fastest reset is a complete boxed set. Meinl HCS is the least bad of the cheap packs and the most consistent: hats, crash and ride that at least belong together. It is the pragmatic choice when buying individually is out of reach.
What works
- Three usable cymbals in one purchase
- Matched set means nothing clashes
- Available everywhere, easy to replace
What doesn’t
- Still sheet bronze, still limited dynamic range
- You will outgrow it in a year
- The ride is the weak link by a wide margin
Buy it if you have no cymbals at all and money is tight. Skip it if you already own one decent crash.
B8X is Sabian's answer to the same problem, and it is brighter and louder than the Zildjian I line. For pop, punk and rock covers, that cut is a feature: the cymbal pushes through a loud band. For jazz or quiet playing it is too harsh, which is why this is a step-up pick rather than a universal one.
What works
- Cuts through a loud rehearsal mix
- Consistent quality across the range
- Common enough to find used
What doesn’t
- Bright and one-dimensional compared to cast pro bronze
- Can sound glassy under close mics
- Not the pick for brush or jazz work
Buy it if you play loud rock and need volume. Skip it if you want warmth.
Paiste's PST line is the quiet overachiever of budget cymbals. One 16-inch crash from this range, added to an otherwise mediocre kit, changes how the whole set feels to play. If you only have sixty dollars and a bad kit, this is the highest-value single purchase on this page.
What works
- Punchy and musical for the money
- Genuinely nicer than its price suggests
- Makes a bad kit playable
What doesn’t
- Still not cast pro bronze
- Small sizes wash out quickly when hit hard
- Limited range means limited choices
Buy it if you want the biggest sound change per dollar. Skip it if you can already afford a cast line.
Here is the advice most gear lists hide: a used professional cymbal costs the same as a new beginner one and sounds twenty times better. Cymbals do not wear out the way drumheads do, and a crack is easy to inspect. A used A Custom crash is the best-value cymbal a beginner can own.
What works
- Professional sound at beginner prices
- Holds value, so you can trade up later
- Decades of life left in a clean example
What doesn’t
- You must inspect for cracks and keyholing
- No warranty, no returns in most cases
- Stock varies, so you cannot order a specific one
Buy it if you can meet a seller and tap the cymbal first. Skip it if you need a return policy.
These look strange and sound stranger, but they solve a real problem: practising in an apartment without destroying your neighbours or your touch. They use perforated bronze so they feel almost like a real cymbal in the hand while producing a fraction of the volume. A practice tool, not a performance cymbal.
What works
- Roughly 80% quieter than a standard cymbal
- Real bronze feel, real rebound
- Makes apartment practice possible
What doesn’t
- Sounds thin and papery, unusable live
- Expensive for something you cannot gig with
- No substitute for learning to control a loud cymbal
Buy it if noise complaints are stopping you playing. Skip it if you have a rehearsal room already.
What to skip, and why
- Brass starter packs. These are the thin gold-coloured discs sold in a plastic bag with a beginner kit. They are made from brass rather than bronze, they bend under your thumb, and they sound like a dropped tray. Owning them is worse than owning no cymbals, because they teach you to hit harder instead of listening.
- Any cymbal sold by the millimetre of diameter rather than by name. If a listing says "16-inch crash cymbal" with no maker, it is sheet bronze. There is no exception to this rule, and no amount of internet enthusiasm changes the metallurgy.
- Cymbal "sets" from brands you cannot pronounce. A matching set only helps when the cymbals are good. When they are not, you simply own four bad cymbals that match each other, priced so cheaply that returning them feels like more trouble than keeping them.
- Overpriced "practice" cymbals that are just damped. Muting a bad cymbal with tape or a gel pad does not make it good, it makes it quiet and still bad. If you need volume control, buy a low-volume cymbal designed for it, or practise on a pad instead.
- Buying a whole new cymbal set before you have played on one. Cymbals are personal in a way drums are not. Two players in the same band can want completely opposite sounds. Play other people's cymbals at a shop or a jam before committing your money to a full set.
Three questions that decide it
Do you already own at least one cymbal that does not make you wince? If yes, do not buy a pack. Buy the one cymbal that is missing or worst, and spend the rest of the money on a drumhead upgrade instead. Replacing a snare head changes your sound more than replacing a mediocre crash.
Can you hear the pitch change when you hit it softly versus hard? That is the whole test. A cheap cymbal gets louder and stays at the same frequency, which is exactly what makes it sound flat. A real cymbal opens up, changes character and blooms. If you cannot tell the difference in a shop, ask to compare against the most expensive cymbal in the room.
Will you still be happy with it in two years? If the answer is no, consider buying used instead. Beginner cymbals lose value faster than almost anything else in drumming, while a clean used professional cymbal often sells for what you paid for it. The money you save now is money you spend twice.
Getting the most out of it
Once you own cymbals worth playing, the thing that limits you is no longer the gear, it is your touch. Beginners hit cymbals at one volume because that is all cheap cymbals allow. With a responsive cymbal, spend a whole week playing only soft strokes and listening to how much of the sound sits under the drums.
Stop choking cymbals with your hand to cut them off. Learn to let them ring and to catch them by grabbing the edge gently at the moment you want silence. That single habit is the difference between a cymbal that sounds like a cymbal and one that sounds like a crash effect.
Finally, treat cymbal placement as part of your setup rather than an afterthought. A crash mounted too low gets hit at a bad angle and cracks early, and one mounted too close to your ride gets in the way of your right hand. Angle every cymbal so your stick glances off the edge, never so it lands flat on the surface.
To build the touch that makes good cymbals sound good, work the Rudiment Tempo Trainer on accent control, and read our guide to drum sticks and drumheads so the rest of the kit keeps up with the cymbals.
Frequently asked questions
The questions readers send us most about best cymbals for beginners.
Buy a crash before anything else, because it is the cymbal you hit most often and the one that shapes the energy of a song. A 16-inch crash in a cast bronze line is the safest single purchase. Hats matter next, since they drive your timekeeping. The ride is the last priority for most beginners, because it is the cymbal you learn to use properly only after your hands are steady.
A used professional cymbal is absolutely worth it, because it costs roughly the same as a new beginner cymbal and sounds dramatically better. A brand-new top-tier cymbal is harder to justify when you are still learning, since you cannot yet hear the subtle differences you are paying for. Buy used professional, or new mid-range, and you get most of the benefit.
They are stamped from sheet bronze rather than cast from a bronze alloy, and the stamping process produces a cymbal with no defined pitch and almost no dynamic range. There is nothing you can do to fix this. No amount of tape, gel or technique makes sheet bronze behave like a real cymbal, so replacing them is the only real solution.
Inspect the edge all the way around for cracks and the centre hole for keyholing, which is a worn oval where the stand mount ground away the metal. Tap it lightly and listen for a clean ring rather than a dull thud. A dull thud usually means a hairline crack you cannot see, and a cymbal with a visible crack is a dead cymbal no matter how cheap it is.
Yes, and the ranges on this page are typical street prices rather than fixed figures. Sales, discontinued finishes, bundle deals and used supply move them constantly, and the same cymbal can differ by forty percent between shops in a single month. Always check the current price at the actual seller before you commit, and never trust a price from a list like this one. If you are still assembling the kit itself, start with our drum kit buying guide.