There are several ways to get a nice high frequency sparkle to a dull sound.

There are several plugins that do this, called exciters. Some are really good (and expensive) like BBE, and some suck, making the sound too unpleasant.

There is one trick that can be used when you don’t have a good exciter plugin: use a high pass filter followed by a saturator on a send.

But today i found a new method for doing this, and it sounds great. The trick is to use a convolution reverb, and there are free ones, like SIR, with a hihat sample as the impulse. Then adjust to taste.

Now go try it!