On eBay, seller danalogusa does cymbal lathing and modification. He has done work for me and it was excellent. He is in California but shipping is reasonable.

Thanks for that. I'll look into getting it modify. It's an old CMI UFIP thin Hi Hat. It sounded great before it got cracked.

The circumference reduction will also remove the crack. Win - Win.

Not only did it happen more often than you think, it used to be standard practice with K Zildjian and common practice with A Zildjian till maybe as late as the mid 1960s.

Just for giggles I'll rummage through my cymbals and see what ratio of non standard to standard ones I have. Mea Culpa - I pretty much use only vintage cymbals with the newest being a pair of 70s New Beat HHs.

Pete

Well, that surprised even me. Of the 15 vintage Zildjians I own, only 2 were what I would consider on the number. The other 13 were off, ranging from 1/16 to 1/4 inch.

I don't see why a Super Zyn would be any different.

For you research geeks, the time period range in the sample is as follows:

"Early" Stamps - 5 Cymbals

Trans Stamp - 1 Cymbal

50s Stamp - 4 Cymbals

60s Stamp - 3 Cymbals

Pete

I've had a look at this issue and the management summary is there are several factors at work

[LIST]

[*]Diameters weren't as accurate in the old days (before the 1960s for Avedis)

[*]In the later half of the 1950s I found slightly more oversized Avedis cymbals than in other eras, although that's based on smallish sample sizes. You might find some oversized cymbals in your 1950s ones.

[*]Cymbals from Italy tend to target metric sizes so tend to be undersized. This thread includes mention of a UFIP stencil brand cymbal (CMI) so being undersized is as expected.

[*]Cymbals from China tend to be undersized but I'm not sure whether that is targeting metric sizes or just inaccuracy in edge trimming

[*]Cymbals from Turkey (K Zildjian Istanbul as well as modern ones from the many companies operating there now) tend to be undersized. Based on ink stating the nominal inch diameter compared to the actual diameter, the degree of undersizing is partly a metric diameter target, and partly inaccuracy in meeting the target.

[*]Different companies have actually targeted different diameters at different times and you can see this in the ink designations. But even then the actual diameters aren't what the ink says.

[*]Some inch diameters translate to "almost the same" metric ones. Other inch diameters are not as close to metric "equivalents". For example nominal 14" cymbals target 35cm (undersized 14" at 13.77") or 36cm (slightly oversized) and many cymbals have ink suggesting they target 35cm. But 15" (targeting 38cm) creates a 14.96" cymbal which is quite close. On bigger diameters we see ink saying 22" 55cm on New Stamp Ks which works out as an expected diameter of 21.65" so the undersizing is easier to notice.

[*]I've collected up a dozen or so examples of diameter ink where there is "disagreement" about what the best equivalence is between a metric size and an inch size. Sometimes they even use fractions in their metric target. From an Istanbul (Pre Split):

[img]http://black.net.nz/cym2016/Isty-pre-split-ink.png[/img]

which gets you closer than using the more commonly seen nominal 20" equivalent of 50cm.

[/LIST]

I don't have enough info about Zyn (and other British cymbals) to know what might be going on, but the patterns certainly fit with expectations in terms of undersized cymbals. Good thing we don't buy cymbals by the inch...even though manufacturers set their prices that way. :)

Steve Black, BA, MA, PhD

Retired Statistician and occasional measurer of cymbals

Additionally, I had always assumed that a factor involved in the odd sizes (for HHs at least) could have something to do with the fact that they were usually sold as singles rather than pairs. So a drummer would pick the singles they liked instead of expecting a size matched pair.

Don’t recall when (if?) Zildjian ended the disclaimer “sizes + or - 1/16th of an inch”. I’ll have to dig around for that one.

Pete

Yes I remember seeing the Zildjian disclaimer on exact diameters, but I don't remember when it was from either. Hopefully it is in my notes somewhere.

Hats were advertised as pairs from the 1940s. The Swish was patent applied for Swish cymbal Feb 7, 1938 granted US 2189095 Feb 6, 1940. I haven't yet found the Flange Hats patent number.

[img]http://www.vintagedrumforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=124954&d=1556665092[/img]

And yes it is also possible that more cymbals 15" and under in diameter were sold as singles than as pairs. And of course we can't really tell if a pair of vintage cymbals being sold today as a pair of hats left the factory as a pair. Some have model ink saying Hi-Hat but based on analysis of weights we can pick that others are more likely to be marching band cymbals now in use as hats, and/or spot pairing where somebody paired up a lighter cymbal with a marching or band bottom (DIY New Beat style decades before New Beats). You can see the New Beat ratio come in during the 1960s (bottoms well outside the the "matched weight hats" line I've added). The circles are around some usual specimens include a Trans Stamp pairing (in black) which stands out due to the heavy bottom light top. In this case that pair is actually an early 1940s Pre Trans cymbal over a Zilco TM stamped cymbal -- another piece of evidence that they probably aren't factory. But you never know. They were classified as Trans in this graph just to put them in their proper decade as "early".

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/A14-top-by-bot.png[/img]

Does the old Premier catalog page you attached come from somewhere on VDF and sister sites? I've seen a few Premier examples but not that one, so I'd be interested to know the source. BTW, the Zinjian pictured is Italian (UFIP) as best we can tell.

(Probably mentioned this before but while I do play drums (for free) my real gig is as a history teacher (and trained researcher). That means I get at least some of my @#$%& and giggles from research. If I'm into something I'm going to learn as much as I can about it.)

Besides this family of websites, I like these two:

drumarchive.com

vintagecymbalguide.com

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that drummers started to get picky once HH stands started to show up in the 1928 catalogs. It did, however, take some time for most folks to get on the same page. My assumption is that younger players adapted sooner and almost universally while older player likely stayed with what they were familiar with at least for the early years.

These are three catalog scans from Premier and Ludwig's 1928 catalogs (there are no HH stands in their 1927 catalogs) plus one from 1932.

They show that in all terms everybody was figuring out what worked best. TAKE NOTE OF THE FACT THAT ALL THREE CATALOGS SHOW DIFFERENT CYMBAL CONFIGURATIONS.

Pete

The first scan here is from that same 1928 Premier Catalog and is the first time they showed that much concern for the exact sizes. My educated guess is that people where suddenly concerned because of the new HH stand's availability.

I'm further guessing (see the second scan from Zildjian's 1963 catalog) that a whole generation of drummers lived with that thought where whatever sound YOU were looking for should determine what type of cymbals to use on your HH stand.

That comes from the last sentence in the second scan.

And finally I'm thinking that Zildjian's introduction of the New Beats probably killed off that idea. Now we think of two that were designed and produced to work together.

Pete