Ha ha! I admire your honestly. No offense taken. It's not like I made the thing myself. I happen to think it sounds great, mind you. As far as old 18" A's go I mean, what do you want?
Thin don`t work fo me I think they all sound crappy. You have to do gentle to get them to sound good, something I`m not accustomed to. Thin has good stick and sometimes bell, but they just sound crappy and washy.
Thin don`t work fo me I think they all sound crappy. You have to do gentle to get them to sound good, something I`m not accustomed to. Thin has good stick and sometimes bell, but they just sound crappy and washy.
I like a cymbal that's versatile. I'm no jazzer or cymbal snob. I'm more of a vintage collector, so when I saw this Avedis was under 1200 grams I just had to have it. I think as a crash it's nice! I'll definitely be using it.
By the way, I just removed the rivets hoping it would sound amazing, but it's very ordinary. Still a cool cymbal though.
I like a cymbal that's versatile. I'm no jazzer or cymbal snob. I'm more of a vintage collector, so when I saw this Avedis was under 1200 grams I just had to have it. I think as a crash it's nice! I'll definitely be using it. By the way, I just removed the rivets hoping it would sound amazing, but it's very ordinary. Still a cool cymbal though.
When you go to sell it, it`ll fly off the shelf,....High demand.
I like the sound of that one Chromeo. The closest sounding cymbal I've got is an 18" which is a little heavier at 1240g. Mine is 1960s and has the 1.5" version of the trademark and the special cup (see below). I think yours would make a great crash or a very washy ride.
If you are up for a little more measuring I'd be interested to know which bell yours has. Any units will do, I can convert. Cool1
There are two likely bell dies used on your 18" cymbal: the medium cup and the special cup. The medium cup is about 5" in diameter, and the special cup is a little larger in diameter (5.5") and a little taller (3mm or so). In this first picture I thought yours looked like the medium cup, but in the video I'm not so sure. It might be the special cup.
Measuring the diameter of the bell can be tricky not because we can't use rulers, but because when the transition between the bow and bell is very smooth it is hard to be sure where it stats. I've described some of my methods here
http://black.net.nz/avedis/bells.html#anatomy101
And here's the thing about the difference in cup size. By the 1960s the special cup was used on the 18" crash and crash ride models, and the medium cup was used on rides. But I haven't traced the bell dies back into the 1950s yet. I've been collecting the info to do the study, but haven't processed it all yet. It's all part of tracking the different models back through time. Dedicated crashes didn't appear until until the late 40s early 50s according to Zildjian (Sound Lab White Paper #1 available via my site) but although they describe why dedicated crashes have larger bells, they don't say just when that came info fashion. So I'm looking carefully at bells from different production eras.
The years for the stamps in the 1950s aren't known exactly, and neither are the boundaries between the decades defined exactly. There are at least 4 identified Transitional Stamps and they span the later half of the 40s through the early 50s. As Mike says all the Trans Stamps share the feature of not having dots in the U S A (among other things). Then you have 3 Large stamps from the mid 1950s.Then you have 2 Small stamps from the late 1950s, although once again we don't know exactly when the factory stopped using the Small Stamp dies and started using what we call the 60s dies. You can be fairly sure it wasn't December 31, 1959 or January 1, 1960. There are two identified Small stamp dies, and the one on your cymbal is thought to be the earlier of the two (called SSA) based on the top portion being incompletely pressed in. That is a proxy for measuring the width of the Zildjian Co accurately. The SSA version is maybe 1957ish, 1958ish. But I prefer to just say "late 50s" because we really don't know the years that accurately. Your 18" is tied for lightest with one I have in my database for that production era. This was the graph a year ago. [img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/A18-weights-by-era.png[/img]As of today, there are 6 sub 1120g cymbals which include [LIST][*]A Zildjian & Cie Vintage crash (these were targeting Trans Stamps so that's not a suprise)[*]Two Large Stamps[*]One Trans Stamp[*]One 78-82 Crash (probably a Paper Thin but the model ink is gone)[*]One SSB (at 1115g it is slightly lighter than yours).[/LIST]This is out of 305 18" Avedis Zildjian cymbals I've got weights for (excluding Swish models which tend to be light). So yours is in the lightest 2%. Nice find. The Joe Morello Take 5 ride also has an SSA stamp (same as yours) and my information says Take 5 was recorded on July 1, 1959 for the Time Out album. This fits with it being a fairly new cymbal at the time. Where does your year for the recording come from?
Great info. Thank you!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKF8B_3TxBc&feature=youtu.beHere's how it sounds anyway. It's a very rough video.
Nice demo.
Nice find. I like the sound.
We'll see. I'll hang on to it for a while anyway. I've had some Transition stamp Hi Hats before that were 5xxgrams each, papery thin cymbal. This 18" feels like it's from that same batch if that makes any sense? I took the rivets out by the way. Don't know if I already mentioned that. That was after you said it sounded like crap, ye bastid. Ha ha. Just a joke ;)
Sounds better without the rivets, so thanks. Clapping Happy2
