The Roland CY cymbals are HANDS DOWN better than anything else on the market. However, the quality of the CY-8's leaves a lot to be desired. A couple of years ago I extended my kit to include two of these. I already had two CY-14C's, a CY-12R/C and a CY-15R/C. I figured I would save a few bucks and go with a couple CY-8's instead of buying another CY-12 and CY-14. I should have just gone with a couple more CY-12's and paid the extra money, because now I'm going to do that anyway. The CY-8's worked great for the first couple of years, and then they both started to mis-trigger. The choke feature went intermittent on one of them, and doesn't always trigger when struck. On the other one I am experiencing zone issues where both zones will trigger when one zone is struck. I have never had such problems with my other Roland cymbals, but they are more heavy duty and are obviously higher quality. It's not like I am a super-heavy handed drummer either. I hit a few blogs and found that others had the same issues, so it appears that the CY-8's just don't have the same ruggedness that their more expensive brethren do. My recommendation is to save up and go with the CY-12 or CY-14 and you will make the investment once.

I got two of these cymbals with the TD-9SX kit I purchased. I'm about to buy a third, and am amazed at how well these cymbals play. It does take some module tweaking to adjust their sensitivity and crosstalk parameters (mostly due to stand vibration), but once that's done, these cymbals play flawlessly. I've been doing swells, chokes and hammering on these for weeks now with no fear of them failing on me. For the price, you can even afford to keep a spare on hand, unlike the PD-series pads.

Overall, great concept and for the money, you can't get anything else better. The flaw that I found most annoying is that the drum key adjuster screw sticks out too far and contacts the bottom of the trigger to cause a double-hit when you strike the trigger from certain angles. If they just would have made it a little longer there would be no problem.

The first drumset I bought was the Roland TD-KV which came with 2 CY-8 symbols, and now I'm buying my third. I started out on electronic drums because I live in an apartment and wanted to be able to play without disturbing others. What I got was that and more. The drums sound absolutely fantastic and the feel is phenomenal. These cymbals especially amazed me with the feel and the swinging motion. The dual trigger also opens up a world of different sounds you can use. It's a fantastic product. These features leave me with one last question, why go acoustic when you have electronic?