check out the crap my guitar center has laying around that im going to pick up today for liam's drumset (if it sounds nice ill use it and give him mine)
I love the B8 20 inch rides. Like, a lot. I prefer it over some of my nicer rides, in certain situations.
I'm less impressed with the 18 inch I have, though It's sorta gongy with a weird decay... It neither crashes or rides very well but I'm betting it's going to be an improvement over those shit pie plates they bundle into starter kits, for sure. If you're looking to upgrade your own kit with a decent cymbal that won't cost you a ton of cash, look into Dream cymbals. I believe they are hand hammered in China, which is why they're cheap but Honestly... They're super nice.
Yep, I have a set of B8 hats that sound really goddamn good to me. Mind you, they're the hats I started with, so I think I might be associating them to what sounds "right" to me, simply because I've been hearing them so much. When I decided I needed new hats, I spent ages looking for cymbals that sorta sounded like my B8s but had better projection. I ended up finding that in Zildjian A Rocks from the 70s. There's really not a lot out there in the contemporary models that sounds quite like that and I agree, when I play somebody elses' set, the hats are always a bit of stumbling block for me, too. The newer stuff is always either way too quiet or way too washy for me.