Alright, our excellent giveaway sponsored by Diril Cymbals and Arsenal Musical is sadly coming to a close. I wish I could give you guys free gear every single week, but for now, we’ve got to take a little break. Thankfully though, we’ll finish up with one more opportunity to snag one of these beautiful, hand-crafted Turkish splash cymbals.

To enter this week’s contest, shoot an email to dgrblog@gmail.com with the subject line “Diril Special Splash”. The contest is open to residents of the United States and Canada only, and the submission deadline is Tuesday December 18, 2012 at 9:00AM EST. And remember, last week’s contest went up a day late, so you can still enter to win the Diril Shiny splash through tomorrow (Wednesday December 12, 2012) at 9:00AM EST.

Diril Special Splash

This final entry into our Diril Cymbals splash series is probably my favorite of the group (have I said that about all of them? I might have. They’re all great.). Where the other models I received all had very unique characteristics that made each one unconventionally satisfying in its own way, the Special series had one very specific and classic voice at all dynamic levels: quick flash and trash.

Smacked across the bow or tapped with a stick tip, the cymbal was fast and even from start to finish. It had a much more traditional response than the rest of its siblings, and felt very cozy next to whichever cymbals it shared the set with.

The Special splash really exploded off the stand at first touch, and quickly dissipated with an ultra-trashy, yet clean (if that makes sense), wash. In the right setting, some of those trashy tones could be easily extrapolated to support melodic rhythms. Conversely, this little guy is so quick and clean that it felt right at home at all of the loud rock rehearsals I brought it to. Great cymbal, and one that definitely warmed me up to the idea of splashes on the whole.

One last thing I want to touch on about the Diril Special series splash: the half raw, half fine-lathed look was really cool. I don’t pay too much attention to the appearance of cymbals, but this one was really eye catching. It had the same two-surface, buffed, brilliant polish and raw, scorched Earth look as the Aggressive series unit, but there’s just something about the balance of this model that stands out. Great looking pie.

Wrap up

I started this series of reviews by saying that I’m not really a splash guy, and I think that probably still holds true. However, several of these Diril models, and particularly the Special series, impressed the hell out of me. With a fast, trashy punch and a short decay, this was an excellent, satisfying cymbal that felt good every time I played it. I’ll be very sad to see it go, but I’m happy I can pass it along to one of you. Thanks for reading!