Zen,

Here are two photos of the cymbal I was thinking about. It's a 20" K. Custom ride. The stamp is definitely "pressed in" and not laser engraved. You can barely make it out, but the ID number starts with.........well............ID, which puts it at 1994, the first year Zildjian started using unique identifiers.

Thanks for the pics on this one. It looks like the full id number is

ID 7386 - 011 (Unless that is a J not an I? There is a hammer mark in the way)

so that's batch number 7386 and the 11th cymbal in that batch. Perhaps it is on the cusp of the changeover in 1994. We know that most of the other changes we've seen don't happen right on the 1st of January so it wouldn't be surprising to discover that the laser stamp id system was phased in over a month or so some time in 1994.

With your permission I'll check this out with Zildjian and they should be able to confirm it from the batch number (provided I'm reading that correctly as well). The batch number encodes model and diameter info.

Sure thing Zen. Fire away!

Finally sent the info on the K Custom off to Zildjian. I'm finally catching up on correspondence and little projects. The Zildjian site says it will take two working days to respond so we'll see how it goes. I've known about this service for some time but hadn't tried it out myself before. I've only got one Zildjian cymbal with a serial number. Mostly I've just got "old stuff". :cool: