Gibraltar GCS-450C Drum Rack Review:
What To Expect from This Drum Rack
Quality
We found the quality of the Gibraltar 6713E to be surprisingly good. It’s very heavy-duty, thanks to the double-braced legs and the thick hardware rods. No matter how hard you play on the mounted pad, this stand doesn’t have any give.
The 360-degree mounting clamp is also an excellent part of the stand. It allows you to mount the electronic pad in virtually any position, which is amazing. This gives you complete freedom over where you want to place it around your drum set.
With such good construction quality, the stand is highly durable. It’s one of those stands that you can use for decades. As electronic drum pads improve and you find yourself needing to upgrade, you’ll be able to keep the same stand to mount them with.
Construction
The first construction feature that we found very interesting with this stand was the memory lock. Memory locks are very common with hardware stands. However, this memory lock has a wing nut attached to it, making it very easy to lock in place.
Most stands in this price range have memory locks that require the use of a drum key to adjust. This is a relatively small feature, but it makes a huge impact on how easy this stand is to set up.
The other great construction feature is the thickness of the rods. The top rod is just as thick as the bottom one, and that’s what gives the stand a lot of its sturdiness.
When you open the legs as wide as possible, you get a very large base along with extended sturdiness. If you want the stand to take up a bit less space, you can keep the distance between the legs smaller. While it will feel a bit less sturdy, it’s still solid.
Keeping the legs in like this is also a good way of raising the max height of the stand. The height of the stand is the one downside that it has compared to the stands from other brands, as you can’t raise it as high as many drummers would like.
Versatility
While the 6713E is intended to be used with electronic drum pads, you could easily use it to mount drums as well. You just need to get the right mounts and attachments.
For example, you could use the included clamp to mount a rack tom that has an arm. The clamp will lock the arm in place, and then you can angle the rack tom in a comfortable position within your drum setup.
This makes the 6713E a fairly versatile stand to have. It’s also sturdy enough to attach external cymbal arms to it.
So, if you want to add a splash cymbal somewhere in your drum setup, you could put it on a boom arm that is attached to the 6713E. The stand is so sturdy that a boom arm and small cymbal won’t make much of a difference to where it’s positioned.
Price Value Ratio
The price-to-value ratio of the Gibraltar 6713E is incredible. The fact that this stand is more affordable than the ones from brands like Roland and ddrum is its biggest selling point.
It’s also amazing how sturdy this stand is, considering its affordable price tag. If you’re looking for amazing value from an electronic pad stand, you’ll be happy with this one from Gibraltar.
The only downside is that it doesn’t come with the necessary attachments for most electronic pads. You’ll need to purchase those from whatever brand they fall under.