History of cymbal manufacturing

An interesting article by Fritz Steger, author of A History Of Drums Made In Germany, written in German: Welches Becken passt zu meiner Musik und Spielweise? In English that's “Which cymbal suits my music and playing style?”— which is a little misleading, because before he gets to talking about which cymbals passt zu meiner Musik und Spielweise, he gives a pretty detailed history of cymbal manufacturing, mainly in Europe, mainly since the 1800s. 

For you non-German speakers, and myself, also a non-German speaker, here is the English translation (from Google translate) of the history portion. Thanks for DFO user type85 for sharing the link— he has a cool YouTube channel you'll want to subscribe to.

This article is intended to provide a basis for the development of drum cymbals and their various metal compounds from ancient times to the present day. After a historical introduction and presentation of the important manufacturers, the second part deals with the sound properties of cymbals and the various alloys with their advantages and disadvantages.

Part I: Where do cymbals actually come from?

Cymbals are of Asian origin and can be found on Assyrian monuments (2nd millennium BC). They were also part of Indonesian gamelan music in the form of tuned bronze gongs. According to Greek belief, they took away the power of demons, so they were beaten at funerals for the deceased. Western miniatures show them up until the 15th century; then they seem to have been forgotten, probably because the art of hammering them was lost. 200 years later, they reappeared in what is now Turkey and found their way into local military music with their Janissary music during the Turkish wars. Soon after, they also found their place in classical music.

In the 1913 Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente, cymbals are defined as “a percussion instrument made of two convex bronze plates, hammered to the same thickness, about 40 cm wide, made in all sizes, without a specific pitch, with leather handles threaded through the hump.” “For special effects, the edges are gently clinked together or one of the cymbals is struck with a timpani mallet. Art music makes sparing use of this instrument; but in military orchestras and lower-ranking bands, which of course attach one cymbal to the bass drum and thus coarsen the effect, it has become indispensable.”

Since then, hand-made cymbals have fascinated drummers and percussionists in Europe and the “new world” with their complex sounds, rich overtones and unique character. But what makes them so special? The starting point of every cymbal is its alloy – the metal mixture that gives it its basic sound properties.

It's long, the rest of it is below the fold: 

 

The bronze used since early times, the so-called bell bronze (B20), contains around 80% copper and around 20% tin. It is famous for its excellent sound properties, but it is also comparatively complex and can only be produced with heavy and sweaty[!!! -tb] physical effort. The metals are melted on a forge (an open fireplace with a hood and additional air supply) and cast into individual flat pieces. Since the metals bond more and more poorly as the tin content increases, various heating and cooling phases must be observed. This is the only way to roll the flat pieces into flat blanks and shape them by hammering them, while strictly adhering to precise time windows. Small deviations in this process can lead to cracks during production or when playing later.

But even if the processes are strictly adhered to, each individual cymbal is different from the other. Manufacturers also differ in their own "recipes", for example by adding small amounts of other metals such as iron or even silver. The only Turkish cymbal manufacturer to date, K. Zildjian, speaks of a secret formula that has been passed down from generation to generation since 1623.

The founding period (1880 to 1920)

The technology for producing cymbals from bell bronze was also known in Germany at the turn of the 20th century. One brand name was "Krone"; these cymbals were priced at the same level as Chinese cymbals, which suggests that they could not compete with Turkish cymbals, which were more than twice as expensive. However, the majority of B20 cymbals were imported from China and Turkey, and only major orchestras could afford Zildjian corners[??? -tb]. Instead, the focus was on producing cymbals based on industrially manufactured sheets, primarily brass and nickel silver. The alloy is cast into a large bar and rolled hot into a thin sheet from which the so-called round blanks are punched. These round sheets are much more homogeneous and hardly differ from one another. They are formed into cymbals when cold. At first, this was also done by hammering.

A brand name that appears in several catalogs from this period is "Smyrna". In addition to the brass and nickel silver that are still used today, basins were also made from so-called composite metal. This was an alloy of 80 - 90% tin, 2 - 6% copper, antimony and bismuth, which was also used to make cutlery and jugs.

There were a large number of cymbal forges in China, the most famous of which was the Gaohontai company in Wuhan Province, which looks back on a history of almost 2,000 years. The factory was renamed Wuhan in the 1960s. The manufacturing process differs in some ways from the Turkish method.

In Italy, the Agati-Tronci workshop, a manufacturer of organ pipes, had begun to manufacture cymbals using the Turkish method. A special feature was that the liquid alloy was spun into a basic shape using centrifugal force. A process that is still used today under the name "rotocast" (in English, centrifugal casting).

And in St. Petersburg, Estonian musician Toomas Paiste hammered the first cymbals in 1906. He had served in the Russian Imperial Guard and retired in 1901 to open a music shop. The First World War brought development to a standstill, as the metals needed for cymbal production were needed for armaments.

A significant step was that Avedis Zildjian III left Turkey, settled in Boston, USA, and founded a candy company there. In 1927, he received a letter from his uncle Aram informing him that he was to inherit the secret formula for cymbal production. In 1928, Avedis III began manufacturing cymbals in Quincy, Massachusetts. However, since the K. Zildjian factory continued to operate in Turkey, and the Gretsch company held the marketing rights for the USA, he named his company Avedis Zildjian Co.

In the meantime, music had changed dramatically. Previously, only orchestral and marching cymbals had been in demand, but the drum kit had changed to a combined instrument made up of various drums and cymbals played with sticks. New styles of music such as swing and jazz became very popular. Avedis III sought out jazz drummers to understand their needs for the new playing technique and quickly put their desire for thinner cymbals into practice. From this time onwards, cymbals began to be named according to their purpose. In Germany, they were called “hissing and gong cymbals” or later “hit and accompanying or working cymbals”, with the English synonyms being “crash and ride cymbals”.

In order to keep up with the rapidly growing market, the process of making cheaper cymbals - similar to pots and pans - began by no longer hammering the discs, but pressing them into shape on a rotating disk using high pressure. The Nazi regime and the Second World War interrupted this development, at least in Europe. Metal was again important for the war effort and the new music was considered degenerate anyway.

The economic miracle years (The 1950s)

The Paiste family had an eventful history, marked by flight. Their path took them via Estonia to Poland and then to Schleswig-Holstein, where Michail M. Paiste set up a cymbal and gong factory. However, his sons Robert and Toomas, worried by the Cold War, were looking for a "safe country". After being denied a visa to the USA and Canada due to their Russian origins, they settled - more by chance - in Nottwil on Lake Sempach in Switzerland. An absolute stroke of luck, as it later turned out, because in Dornach, about 80 km away, there was a rolling mill that was able to produce B20 bronze using the strip casting process. From this, Paiste developed its "Formula 602" series, which they presented in 1957. Since the bronze produced by strip casting was more homogeneous than individually cast rounds, the individual cymbals are much more similar and also less earthy, which suited some musical styles.

In Italy, the Marradi-Benti, Zanchi & Biasei, Rosati Leopoldo and A. & B. Fratelli Tronci families joined together to form the Unione Fabbricanti Italiani Piatti (Union of Italian Cymbal Manufacturers), or UFIP for short.

In Germany, Roland Meinl founded Meinl Cymbals in 1951 as a one-man business in his basement and produced the two cymbal lines Meteor made of brass and Roman Mark made of nickel silver. Another producer was the company Korn and Riedel near Munich, which produced inexpensive, pressed cymbals under the names Korri, Estrella, Zymbor, Tyrko, Luna, Sultan and the beautiful name Schu-Schu-Türk.

In the GDR, cymbals were pressed by machine in the state-owned company Trowa VEB (Trommelwaren) - the former Sonor factory. Rodjian made hand-hammered cymbals by hand.

In England, pressed cymbals made of nickel silver were available under the names Zyn and Krut (Turk spelled backwards).

In Graslitz – today Kraslice – in the Czech Republic, the former centre of musical instrument making in the 19th century, there were both hammered and pressed cymbals from the still active wind instrument manufacturer Amati, later under the name Magic (until 2005).

The Beat Era (The 60s and 70s)

The appearance of the Beatles with Ringo Starr brought Zildjian full order books worldwide. They were busy automating production processes while maintaining as consistent quality as possible. But guitar amplifiers quickly became larger and the music louder. Just as Zildjian addressed the needs of drummers in the jazz era, it was now the Paiste company that was in tune with the times and was looking for a solution to develop cymbals for this new music. The goal was a softer basic sound with brighter overtones and better durability. With industrially manufactured bronze made of 92% copper and 8% tin, from 1965 onwards they succeeded in developing professional cymbals with a frequency spectrum that gave the cymbals more power than the B20 cymbals. The "Giant Beat" series evolved into the legendary 2002 series in the early 1970s, which made drummers such as John Bonham, Ian Paice, Nick Mason and Cozy Powell, to name just a few, world famous.

Roland Meinl, meanwhile, developed a machine that could produce cymbals fully automatically using the pressing process in a matter of seconds. In the mid-1960s, he was one of the first to import Japanese drums from the companies Star (now Tama) and Pearl. His goal was to sell each of these relatively inexpensive instruments with a set of his cymbals if possible.

The big split (The 1980s)

According to tradition, the Zildjian secret could only be passed on to a male successor. The few times this was not kept resulted in bitter fighting and division. However, Avedis III let his two sons Aram and Robert in on the "Zildjian Secret". After the enormous success, Zildjian opened a second factory, the Azco factory, in Meductic, New Brunswick, Canada in 1968. The background was that Canada could sell to the Commonwealth countries at a much lower price due to the customs union. In addition to cheap, pressed cymbals with the name Zilco, certain Avedis Zildjian models (Canadian A's) were also manufactured there. In the same year, the original Zildjian factory in Istanbul and all trademark rights were regained.

From the mid-1970s, cooperation with the Turkish regime became so difficult that it was decided to close the Turkish factory and bring the remaining family members Mikhail and Kerope Zildjian to North America. Since immigration to the USA was refused, they came to the Canadian factory and began producing hand-hammered K Zildjian cymbals there in 1976. These "Canadian K's" are now among the most sought-after and most expensive cymbals. At the beginning of 1977, Armand Zildjian was appointed president of the Avedis Zildjian Company by his father. A fight broke out between him and his brother Robert over the future direction of the company. Robert Zildjian then separated from the company and in 1981 began producing Sabian cymbals - named after his three children Sally, Billy and Andy - in the Canadian Azco factory.

At the same time, a former cymbal smith from the Zildjian factory in Istanbul, Agop Tomurcuk, together with his partner Mehmet Tamdeger, began to produce hand-hammered cymbals in the old Turkish tradition under the name "Zilciler". The cymbals were clearly different from the cymbals that were largely machine-made in the USA and were also cheaper. Shortly afterwards, the brand name was changed to Istanbul.

After the German company Meinl introduced its first semi-professional King-Beat cymbals made of B8 bronze in 1976, it expanded its range to include the Laser series, the completely robot-hammered Profile series and the Raker series designed for heavy drummers.

New paths (The 1990s)

Due to increasing competitive pressure in the metal industry, the production plant where the B20 bronze, which was produced using the strip casting process, was shut down. But Robert Paiste and his team had something completely different in mind anyway and let the Formula 602 series die - at least temporarily. He wanted to develop a completely new bronze that would outshine everything that had come before. It should combine the advantages of the frequency response of professional B8 series with the balance of B20, "the best of both worlds" so to speak.

The result was the Paiste "sound bronze", which consisted of 85% copper and 15% tin. Even though in theory up to 18% tin can be added to the copper without the second temperature stage, Paiste soon faced problems in practice. The first series, which was produced in 1989 in a rolling mill in Eastern Europe, suffered from quality problems, and these were only resolved when the production of the raw material was moved to southern Germany. Although this alloy was convincing in terms of sound, one disadvantage was the huge loss of material during production and the resulting high costs. The Paiste series Signature, Traditional and Dark Energy were created from this material. When Paiste's patent for the alloys B13 to B18 expired, Zildjian experimented with B15 under the name Project 391, but abandoned it, probably due to the poor cost-benefit ratio.

In 1996, Agop Tomurcuk died in an accident, and it was decided that the Istanbul company would be divided between Agop's sons Arman and Sarkis and Mehmet Tamdeger, who founded a separate company.

In 1990, Meinl introduced the Tri-Tonal series, developed in collaboration with Billy Cobham. It was Meinl's first professional series, on the basis of which the "One of a Kind" line was created at the end of the decade.

Modern times (from 2000)

From the new millennium onwards, practically all manufacturers stopped concentrating on the series they were known for and instead began to serve all niches, from simply pressed brass to hand-hammered cymbals. And the range of alloys was expanded again.

The companies Meinl and, somewhat later, Paiste came to the conclusion that hand-hammered B20 cymbals could only be produced in Turkey and therefore entered into cooperation with Turkish manufacturers who delivered the hammered cymbals to the respective factory where the final finishing took place. Well-known series are Meinl MB20 and Byzance as well as Paiste Twenty and Masters. In the hope of selling larger quantities of B20 cymbals, Paiste with the Formula 602 Reissue series and Meinl with the M series then returned to the strip casting process and cooperated with a southern German metalworks. However, the timing was unfortunate because the high investment in a second temperature stage meant that the production costs were extremely high. The success of both series was rather moderate.

After the split in Istanbul, Turkish cymbal manufacturers sprang up like mushrooms. Anatolian, Bosphorus and Masterwork were the beginning. A good 20 years later, there are over 30 companies.

B10 (Meinl MB10) and B12 (Zildjian ZHT and S-Family as well as Meinl Soundcaster and Pure Alloy) were new alloys that came onto the market. Meinl has almost completely dispensed with B8 bronze since 2024.

In addition to very cheap Chinese cymbals, which are sold by a Belgian wholesaler, Dream Cymbals, which come from China but are processed in Canada, occupy a special position.

Not bad. I also recommend The Cymbal Book by Hugo Pinksterboer for even more insane detail on every aspect of the history, manufacturing, playing of cymbals.