Some serious trading later, and I have my near-final setup, cymbalwise. I got rid of the Sabians and Zildjians, and now have a Bosphorus hi-hat, Bosphorus ride, and Istanbul ride, with two Istanbul Agop Sultan crashes.
There is NOTHING, repeat, NOTHING like Turkish brass that has been hand hammered and hand lathed. PERIOD.
Nothing against Avedis Zildjian - modern drumming wouldn't be what it is without his contribution, and without Zildjian, brass would be a noisy sheet of BANG rather than a musical, toned alloy. Nor Sabian, who do an awesome job in making cutting edge stuff and custom jobs. Nor Paiste, whose Twenty series splash is one of the few mass produced cymbals I still own. The Sabian prototypes and the Paiste prototypes, being handmade and one-of-a-kind, stay.
But oh my LORD, the beautiful complexity of sound you get out of something handmade. I don't work for Bosphorus and am not sponsored by em. But man, just listen to the sound of a stick pinging off a Masters Vintage hi-hat and you'll never listen to a mass produced cymbal the same way again, regardless of how good it is, and the K series is awesome.
GO OFF THE BEATEN TRACK. There's good stuff out there.
There is NOTHING, repeat, NOTHING like Turkish brass that has been hand hammered and hand lathed. PERIOD.
Nothing against Avedis Zildjian - modern drumming wouldn't be what it is without his contribution, and without Zildjian, brass would be a noisy sheet of BANG rather than a musical, toned alloy. Nor Sabian, who do an awesome job in making cutting edge stuff and custom jobs. Nor Paiste, whose Twenty series splash is one of the few mass produced cymbals I still own. The Sabian prototypes and the Paiste prototypes, being handmade and one-of-a-kind, stay.
But oh my LORD, the beautiful complexity of sound you get out of something handmade. I don't work for Bosphorus and am not sponsored by em. But man, just listen to the sound of a stick pinging off a Masters Vintage hi-hat and you'll never listen to a mass produced cymbal the same way again, regardless of how good it is, and the K series is awesome.
GO OFF THE BEATEN TRACK. There's good stuff out there.
sirkka:
that's actually not a bad strategy.
threadlocker:
There's a company called Hammerax that makes some really wild stuff.