My Custom Cymbals

Glad you like them !

Do they still sound like B8 alloy cymbals to you?

Problems with playing the soundfiles should now be solved. (No more Quicktime error)

Thanks !

I don't think it's allowed to mention prices here so I will answer you by mail.

iI answered your short message immediately after I got it, didn't you get it ?

Hammering is almost always both top and bottom hammering.

Adjusting tension is different for each cymbal and is not really related to shape. Any cymbal can be hammered loose or tense. This is really impossible to explain. You really have to try and gain experience, you will certainly find out. Don't give up !

Just added some newly finished cymbals to my site.

A few light jazzrides, amongst which a 22' weighing only 1920 grams.

Also a few crashes and "Perforation Trashes". There's now a separate directory for the latter.

Check out the soundfiles.

Here's the soundfile of the Extra Light 22" Jazzride I made from a medium weight Ufip. Sounds very trashy and complex. Looks like this:

This other 22" Jazzride also comes from a Ufip but weighs 2280 grams, which is still fairly light.

And these are soundfiles of the 18" and 20" Perforation Trashes.

If you want to see a video of me playing a drumsolo ,go to THIS download page and wait for 30 seconds. After that you will be able to click a download button, you'll see. You need Real player.

The video dates from 2002. I'm using my more rock oriented self-hammered cymbals. The drums and the single bassdrumpedal are ADAMS, the hihatstand is an old Pearl, the snaredrum is one I built myself.

And another new bunch of freshly hammered cymbals is added to my webspace ! Rides, crashes, hihats, china's, a perforation trash...

Check them out !

Zitat

Original von wafi
soundsamples hat er ...

The "before and after" soundfile of these hihats is HERE.

Another modification I did of a Turkish cymbal was a Grandmaster 22" ride, which I had to make more complex, lighter and more Tony Williams-like. Again, here's the "before and after" SOUNDFILE.

Now the links to the "before and after" soundfiles should work again.

More before and after modification soundfiles in this MAP.

Zitat

Mir ist das mittlerweile zu kommerziell- könnten wir das in unter "Firmen-News" unterbringen?

aber denke das wir hier im Forum niemals zuvor soviel Eigenwerbung zugelassen haben

Bibbel and Drumstudio, both of you are right, I am promoting what I do. But I am not a firm and I don't want to be. Most of all I am a drummer who loves cymbals and who is unhappy with the machine made (but so called handmade) cymbals from the big "firms" who are trying to make everyone beliieve that they produce artisanally handmade products.

Take the modern K Zildjians or Sabian HH's as an example.
Most of the present day K's are really nothing else than Avedis's with a flatter shape, which automatically creates a lower "darker" pitch. Making a flat shape is a very simple trick to create a "darker" sound (but it cannot create a more complex and rich sound like an old K). The low profile is created SIMPLY by a press, just like the higher Avedis profile is machine pressed. The small amount of hammering the K's and HH's get only makes a small sound difference, the sound is really mostly determined by the machine press.
So the price difference between Zildjian A's and K's, or between Sabian AA's and HH's is artificial !! Aren't THESE the type of "firms" that should be criticized? Although K's are not at all artisanally made you have to pay more for them than for A's ! Zildjian still puts a "K" on their cymbals, JUST to get more money out of everybody's pockets. There is nothing in their manufacturing that justifies the higher price. K Constantinoples are an even bigger fraud. Also these are completely machine made, yet Zildjian simply makes these cymbals visually more similar to an old handmade cymbal. They are really fooling the audience.

Of course the modern Turkish cymbals like Istanbul and Bosphorus are still handhammered and many of them sound very beautiful. But there's a problem here as well.
Because of the high demand for Turkish cymbals the Turkish factories have to engage a lot of unexperienced people to hammer. These are given a basic training in shaping a cymbal but they don't learn the finer skill of really fine-tuning a cymbal with a hammer. so the quality of Turkish cymbals is very unpredictable and inconsistent.
Furthermore, factory cymbalsmiths do not play and listen to the cymbal while they are hammering it. Simply because they aren't drummers or percussionists, so they are really not interested in the sound. Their job is merely to create a certain shape. This applies as much to Turkish hammerers as to personnel in the huge Western factories.
To me that's like cooking without tasting. When I'm hammering, I constantly interrupt work to check the sound. I don't just hit the cymbal once to get a quick idea, but I play all parts of the surface to make sure the tension is correct everywhere and there are no unplayable spots. Of course this is a much more time-consuming procedure than just shape-hammering but I feel it's essential to create really good cymbals.

For me it would be impossible to make a living hammering cymbals in this extremely labour-intensive way because I spend much more hours on a cymbal than the price I ask for it. I do it mainly out of passion. I do ask a reward but I mostly charge only half of my hours.
Next to that I have spent a FORTUNE buying cymbals simply because I LOVE them. Check the amount of cymbals on my website, they are all my cymbals (except for some in the "before and after" section. I admit that my cymbals are for sale, but I know for sure that many of them will never get sold because I hammered these to my personal taste which is like Drumstudio says "diffuser, verwaschener und trashiger".