Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as this question might suggest: “Can you recommend a good reverb setting for a rim shot sound? I have a Lexicon PCM 91. Do you know if this sound usually gets a certain treatment for greater realism?”
Wow. I would think more than half of the presets in a PCM-91 would sound great. It is truly one of the better sounding reverbs out right now. If I were you I would just scroll through some of its presets until you come across what you like. I don’t think there is one particular “right” reverb sound for a rim shot, it’s just whatever happens to fit in with the song and the other instrumentation. In fact, that is a rule of thumb I would use for drum reverbs in general. The big thing to be aware of is that in most popular music the drums and their associated effects will tend to define the whole soundstage for the recording. The correct tones and effects will tend to “glue” everything together in a way that is aesthetically pleasing for what you may be trying to do. The wrong sounds will tend to cause things to fight one another and produce an unstable or inconsistent mix, which, of course, can sometimes be a good thing, depending upon what you are trying to do. As for the rim shot sound, usually a dense reverb with 10 – 30 ms of pre-delay, and 1 – 3 seconds of decay (RT60) will work. EQ the tone of it to suit your personal taste.