Cheap jazz cymbals

During that Washington residency one of the students asked me for a recommendation on an inexpensive jazz cymbal. It's not really a budget category of cymbals, and I didn't have a great answer for him. 

First, for “jazz cymbals”, we're normally looking for lighter weight cymbals, that can act as both a ride and a crash, with some complexity, and a warmer, darker sound. Usually that means Turkish or Turkish-style hand-hammered cymbals.

Buying new is generally not the best value. The cheapest cymbal might be the one you only have to buy once, and everybody thinks whichever latest hot item is going to be that cymbal, and often it is not. They don't work out as well as the buzz surrounding them promised. The Zildjian company, for example, has gotten really good at hyping its new products. So people end up married to cymbals that don't work well for them, just because they spent so much on them. 

Sidebar: Cymbal & Gong is, I believe, an exception to that equation— any truly good cymbal is, when you find one. In selling them, many times I have seen jazz professionals, after playing them— against their natural bargain-seeking nature— enthusiastically buying them new and happily using them for years. To me that's a special situation. I believe they're very special instruments.  

But generally, to get into jazz cymbals for the cheapest initial price tag, you have to shop used.

For students, the first move from lousy student cymbals is to get the cheapest available professional cymbals: dirty old A. Zildjians or Sabian AAs. That's still a good move; those are good, all-purpose cymbals. My very old how to get real cymbals when you're poor post still is mostly true. 60s-80s A. Zildjians and 70s-80s Sabian AAs can be gotten very cheaply. They're not considered “jazz cymbals” now, but they have certainly been used on many jazz gigs and recordings. 

For actual jazz-seeming hand hammered cymbals, in the last decade there have been some tantalizing  options, notably Dream and Agop Xist... each of which quickly got more expensive with the buzz surrounding them. Dreams are highly variable in quality, and it would be easy to get stuck with a pretty crummy sounding cymbal. Xists are better, but are not much cheaper than some real pro cymbals we'll talk about in a moment. They're good if they're a bargain, they're not good if they're more expensive than the cymbals I'll mention next. 

I think students should look for: 1980s American K. Zildjian ride or Sabian HH medium ride. Any random one will likely be a decent, versatile cymbal, that you can use for some years as your taste and ear for cymbals develops. The medium rides will be a safer random purchase than the jazz rides, and will be more versatile cymbals for students. 

That's the easiest move: get the dirtiest, funkiest example you can find of either of those. “Flea bites” on the edges and keyholing are acceptable, cracks and “repairs” are not acceptable.

If you want to shop a little bit, perhaps take a bigger risk, here are some general guidelines:  

The product lines in currently manufactured “hand hammered” type cymbals have expanded enough that we can distinguish between ordinary and top of the line, and recently, boutique— I'll comment on all of them, based on the premise of buying a lifetime cymbal once. Maybe also antique.  
 

Ordinary: Regular lines of the major companies. Zildjian and Sabian will be safest, cheapest, and most plentiful of these.  

K. Zildjian (American) ride, jazz ride; Sabian HH ride, light ride, Traditional series by Agop, Bosphorus, and Mehmet.   

TOTL:  Ambitious/innovative designs trying to be the ultimate in something, with a dedicated elite-seeming marketing angle, stylized appearance. More expensive, with more weird/specialty/exotic cymbals. 

Kerope, Constantinople, various K Custom, various Sabian HHX series, many Agop, Bosphorus and Mehmet series. 

Boutique: Enthusiast artisan individuals, usually one-off designs. It's good that people are doing this, and they should be supported, but purely in terms of value in getting a usable instrument, this is an expensive, rather risky category. These cymbals should really be chosen in person, by someone who knows what they want, and knows how to judge a cymbal.  

Bettis and Funch are perhaps most popular right now.  

Antique: Old cymbals with a lot of caché. Most expensive option, and a big gamble that you will get something you like— many individual cymbals in this category are not good. Or, from a player's perspective, not better than newer, much less expensive options. Can be very expensive, in the weight range we want.   

K. Zildjian, 50s or earlier A. Zildjian, Spizzichino.  

 

Note: Cymbal & Gong probably falls under the TOTL category, though the ones I carry I would categorize as great ordinary cymbals— the designs and sound are traditional. They're very safe to purchase— I select each cymbal I sell, and I only sell cymbals I would want to play. C&G is a very small company, but the cymbals are produced by a professional shop, with established designs and exceptional consistency, so I wouldn't call them boutique.   

There are a number of other smaller Turkish brands that you may be able to find some used bargains with them— lesser known brands will depreciate more, and be cheaper to begin with. Again, traditionally lathed cymbals will be safest. “Sultan”-type designs (with unlathed bell and a wide unlathed band in the riding area) are also reasonably safe.

For a student getting a set, the safest and most economical strategy might be to get one of the 20" K or HH rides above, with an A. Zildjian or Sabian AA 16-18"crash (thin) and 14" hihats (New Beat, medium, regular, light).   

Shopping for jazz cymbals, the ideal range of gram weights would generally be: 

18" - 1325-1425g
20" - 1650-1950g - Note that the recommended 20" K/HH rides will be heavier than that.
22" - 2050-2350g
14" hihats -  less than 1000g top / 1200g bottom

Within those weights, lighter = getting rather splashy,  heavier = trending towards a medium.

Good luck! Please feel free to contact me with any questions. 

Cymbalistic: new Reverb store!

CYMBALISTIC: I finally got around to setting up a Reverb store for Cymbalistic, my cymbal site, for those who wish to buy that way. 

It's functional now; I'll be adding the remaining cymbals I have in stock, and upgrading the photos in coming days.

If you've visited the Cymbalistic site, you'll notice the prices on Reverb are higher— to cover the “free” shipping. It just simplifies things; your final cost will be close to the same buying either way. 

The state of the cheap real cymbal market

No, no, no

True to my whiplash self-contradiction form, I'm following up my “THERE'S TOO MUCH PRODUCT INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET” rant with a dense informational post about shopping for cheap cymbals on the internet. Not really, though. My advice is, if you need cheap cymbals, get a 20, an 18, and 14" hihats and stop worrying about it. This is just to help you find them.   

Ten years ago I wrote a post “how to get real cymbals when you're poor”, in which I suggested looking for dirty 70's A. Zildjians, or early Sabian AAs, or pre-serial Paiste 602s. Dirty and funky, but no cracks or damage. In 2012 it was easy to find those types of cymbals in desirable models (medium rides, crash/rides, thin crashes, New Beat or medium hihats) in the $80-100 range. It looks like that market may be thinning out a bit, and shifting— and prices increasing, dramatically with some items/brands. 

Here are some impressions from looking for those kinds of cymbals on Reverb, eBay, and Craigslist: 

Prices generally

You should be able to find ample good regular cymbals in the $100-150 range, with some occasional 16" crashes or heavier 20" rides below $100. With the following caveats, by brand name:  

A. Zildjian: Below $100, forget it. Around $120 we start seeing a few real cymbals you might want, around $140 they start becoming plentiful. Which, frankly, is about where they should have been all along. It's still a good deal for ordinary professional cymbals. Most of the cymbals we want are found in the $140-175 range. Around $175 we start seeing a lot more ink on cymbals— meaning 80s and newer— and collectible things, or things being passed as collectible. 

Sabian AA/AAX: Many more good options below $100, a couple below $80. And quite plentiful through the same range as the Zildjians. These are generally 10-20 years newer than the A. Zildjians, so they're mostly squarely in that heavier 80s mode. 

Paiste 602: When I wrote that first post in 2012 it was possible to find bargains on beat-up old “pre-serial” 602s (with no silk screening and no stamped serial number), but that's sure ancient history.

NO!

Virtually all old 602s are priced to the tune of $100-300 above even a premium A. Zildjian of the same vintage. They're very consistent and reliably good, but they're also basically simplified, cleaner-sounding A. Zildjians. Same category of cymbal, with less character, but also fewer bad cymbals.  

Paiste 2002: I don't really recommend buying these any more. It's a badly dated sound to me. They should be in the same category as the above cymbals, or cheaper, but they're more expensive. They don't become plentiful below ~$175. Same is true of the comparable 2000 and 3000 lines— or Sound Formula or Signature, for that matter.

Other brands: Turkish cymbal manufacturing has really exploded in the last 20 years, but I'm not seeing many of them used in our price range. Dream cymbals, from China, have been around for a long time, and some of them are priced well, but so many of them are weird and bad, that there's no reason to mess with them if you can't play them in person. 

This broad increase in prices on ordinary bargain pro cymbals is enough to make us raise our standard, and it'll be harder to take a risk buying something you're not sure about. You'll want to know the weight in grams, and hopefully get a recording of it. You may find you can get the same price or better at your local drum shop or pawn shop. 

The fundamentals remain the same
A. Zildjians from the 60s-present are still the ordinary, modern, cutting, very bright cymbals we all know and are used to, and few/none of them are collectible, premium items. Nothing has changed now that the cymbals are ten years older. 60s-70s, maybe 80s vintage are the most desirable of them to me. My feeling is that in the 90s the quality begins getting worse, and most of them I play are hard on my ears. Newer Sabian AA/AAX cymbals are often quite good— they're my preferred "current" (90s-present) cymbal for a modern "A" sound. 

Cymbal orphanage
Looking at the lower end of the price spectrum really makes you grieve for the state of the world. It's looking very flaky. I guess it always did, but I was struck by it this time. Lots of orphaned hihat bottoms, damaged cymbals, single marching/band cymbals, tons of budget grade cymbals of all kinds— 40 years worth now, since Zildjian and then Sabian began producing them by the cubic mile. Cracks and "repairs" are much more commonplace and accepted than I ever remember them being— previously cymbals like that were considered virtually DOA, now they seem to be half-expected. 

Stamp mania
Cymbal geeks use cold stamp design to judge the age of older K. and A. Zildjian cymbals— I'm skeptical of the accuracy of that, but there it is— some people are now trying to sell ordinary modern cymbals as somehow a vintage collectible by describing their stamp. Beware of that— once again, no A. Zildjian from the 1960s or later is collectible, in my opinion. 

Know your gram weights 
You need to know how much a cymbal weighs in grams, and what that means. Many of these cymbals are unlabeled, and actual weight often varied widely even when you know the model name. People

Get this. 

selling an unlabeled cymbal may be guessing what category of cymbal they're selling, or deliberately using the non-labeling to sell you an undesirable orphaned marching cymbal as a "crash cymbal." If you can't get a gram weight from the seller, you're taking your chances. 

Here's a pretty good guideline for ride cymbal weights, for 19-22" rides. This cymbal weight calculator seems pretty accurate for >20" cymbals (likely to be rides), and quite misleading for <20" cymbals (likely to be crashes). Enter the size and gram weight, and it tells you the weight category of the cymbal. I think it's "calibrated" for ride cymbals. Anything you want to perform as a crash cymbal should come back as "extremely light" or "very light." Merely "light" will get you a what is normally considered a medium crash, which you do not want, trust me.    

  
Those new better cheap cymbals
There have been a couple of newer lines of better-than-usual cheaper B20 cast cymbals— XS20 by Sabian and Xist by Agop— they're almost real cymbals, and they've been around long enough to start finding their way onto the used market. Normally used cheap cymbals are virtually worthless, but these hold their value pretty well— so well, in fact, that there's no point in buying them. For the XS20 there's a small price break, but not enough to justify buying them over an AA. There are a few reasonable Xists you can get for the same price as the cheapest AAs, but they're still worse cymbals. The fancy looking Xist "dry dark" series aren't really bargain cymbals; they're priced about the same as very new used A.s and AAs. Instead of being great bargain cymbals, they decided to price them as crappy premium cymbals. 

Right now there are not any non-professional series cymbals I would recommend buying for more than $50 per cymbal. I'll write another post soon rounding up some of these attractive sub-professional lines. 

What to do about “jazz cymbals”
You can use any of these type of cymbals we're talking about as jazz cymbals, provided your ride isn't ridiculously heavy. You could look for a crash/ride or light right for your main cymbal. "Hand-hammered" type cymbals, Sabian HH cymbals start appearing in the $120-150 range. American made K. Zildjians with the big 80s-looking "K" printed on them are generally $50-100 more. There are a lot of mediocre ride cymbals by either brand. That's another topic for another day, in fact. 

Sidebar: Shopping in the YouTube age

Continuing a particular aspect of that why I hate videos post: information paralysis. It hits me whenever I have to buy camera equipment, or electronics, or computer related products. It's always a manic descent into the hell of comparisons of irrelevant minutiae. 

It's a peculiar thing of this digital age: the endless gathering of more data than you will ever be able to use in the whole remainder of your now-miserable life. Doing something and living with it is intolerable, we need to get everything right in advance, before risking anything. 

Except by doing that we're not avoiding risk, we're committing to something worse: a whole lot of time wasted on frustrating, largely hypothetical, partially-informed data analysis. And never getting around to the thing we said we wanted to do. 

All you really want to know is: is it a good value, is it going to do what I want, is it going to work for a long time. Will I like it, will it be enough of an improvement on what I have to be worth the purchase.

What to do is:

Just buy some things, live with them awhile, find out how well they suit your needs. Learn their shortcomings with respect to same, find something better next time. Get stuff, use stuff, get better stuff based on that experience.

Stop trying to cover your ass for every possible hypothetical situation they just told you about, put the focus on what you're doing, not the consumer item you're using to do it. Do the thing. 

Usually, what you get will be good enough, and if not, your actual loss is minimal... if you didn't approach it like a jackass, spending way too much money buying a new item because you have a fetish for shiny things and unwrapping virgin packages untainted by human hands.  

It helps to find out what's normal, what everybody uses— not the rabble, the smaller number of people who are serious about an activity. Low budget professionals, who buy infrequently, and use it a lot. Like a lot of problems created by the internet, it's solved by talking to people.   

Finally, about how product lines are designed:

A lot of very new, very expensive, rapidly depreciating items are intended for moneyed bleeding-edgers. They'll have some awesome wonder-features that create the illusion of “changing the game”— they do not, “the game” is always about fundamentals— and may be designed to render some previous reasonably priced workhorse item obsolete.

What pros use is usually a level below that— “pros” being people who use the thing as their main business, or use it in the course of doing another kind of business. But professionals spend their money wisely*, and can often do their work with years-old equipment. Which is where the best value is generally found in used gear— moderately priced moderately old used pro stuff. This type of thing tends to hold its resale value after its a few years old.  

*- There are certainly some big money, high volume pros who constantly
update to the newest thing, but that's definitely not me, probably not you. 

There's a large middle grade “pro-sumer” area for more or less normal people who are into the hobby, who like new stuff, but don't have unlimited money to spend. These are mostly perfectly functional for most people, even some pros/professional situations, but does not hold its value over time. Neither a good nor terrible value. 

And there's the cheap junk, for broke or permanently poor people. Maybe it's very cheap, but still overpriced for what it is. The economics are designed to bleed poor people dry. Instead of spending $1500 once in ten years (that you can recover at the end), you spend $3000 spread out over ten years, ending up with a lot of valueless junk. The products are designed to be semi-usable for a time, and virtual waste when you're done with them. 

Would somebody please buy these drums?

...before I have a moment of weakness and do something stupid? This set of 70s Sonor Phonics in all the right sizes has been on eBay for a couple of months now, for a pretty darned reasonable price. It's got 10, 12, 13, and 14" toms, and a 20" bass drum. The finish is not the most desirable in the world, but it's not terrible either— it seems to be pretty common, so you stand a reasonable chance of finding an orphaned 18" BD or 16" FT— the only other drums you could possibly want to add to this. The seller says the BD and FT are Centennials, and the other drums are regular Phonics, but they're all the same thing. Exact same drums.

I fell in love with Phonics several years ago when I borrowed a bop set for a jazz tour, rock recording session, and one rock gig in Belgium. It had been a long time since I had gotten really excited about a particular brand of drums. After a couple of years I found my own set, and they've been great. Very punchy with a low tuning, almost pianistic with a high tuning. The 18" bass drum is a monster, and the 20 must absolutely rock. Very early 90s Joey Baron.

If you're a player, and DGAF about a finish that's slightly dated, I'd be contacting this guy and trying to finagle free shipping on these suckers.

There's no excuse at all for buying student cymbals any more

Unless you just live for peeling away factory packaging, or have some kind of sick virginity fetish. Following up on my previous piece on this subject— to get good, cheap cymbals now, all you have to do is just hold out your hands and wait for the the low-hanging fruit to plop into them. This is what many older used Sabian AAs—not cracked or otherwise damaged, nor even all that dirty— are selling for these days:

And then I just stopped looking. There were many more that were under $100, and many more than that under ~$130, which I would've considered to be a nice bargain a few years ago. Same goes for late-60's-mid-80's A. Zildjians; for $72 I just picked up an early 80s 20" Deep Ride which looks like it could've been sitting on the rack in a music store for the past 30 years. They're cheap as dirt. This is just as sellers of the contemporary Paiste equivalent— the pre-serial 602 line— have gone out of their minds in the opposite direction, tacking on at least $100 to the selling price of the ubiquitous 20" Medium Rides, and basically doubling the price of everything else. Then there's this sleazebag:

Back in 1959 PAISTE launched a series of cymbals that was destined to change the world and to become one of the world's most revered cymbals in the history of cymbal making.... 

This one was produced between 1959 and 1966 Its beautiful, pristine, and always controlled musical tone was adopted by well-known drummers and percussionists including none other than Joe Morell, Art Blakey, Paul Motian, Ndugu Chancler, Jon Hiseman, Charlie Watts and a host more! For your consideration, a '50' year old +, vintage, pre-serial, PAISTE Formula 602, 22" MEDIUM RIDE! This "Pretty-Paleolithic-Piece-of-PAISTE-Perfection" is one of the 'Holy Grail' of rides. This cymbal has absolutely unbelievable balance, with excellent stick definition and the perfect amount of wash & volume!This is a very old Paiste cymbal made in Switzerland during the pre-serial number era (1959-1966), and it has been kept in its original condition; that is to say, never cleaned. 

Considered by some to be the "holy grail" of cymbals, these original Paiste cymbals have a unique sound that have not been matched, even with the re-installment of the Formula
Highly collectable and fairly rare …get yours ...

“Considered by some” indeed; the guy (user name soundinvestmentsusa, located in New Jersey) is asking $1850 for a disgusting-looking 22" 602 Medium Ride from around 1970. Considered by everyone but the aforementioned some to be worth around $180. It's a good cymbal, and maybe you could get up to around $250 for a really nice one. The second-most insane psychotic selling one of these is asking a full $1100 less than this guy— still an outrageous gouging.

Anyhow, if you want to take advantage of this upside-down price bubble, my previous advice is basically sound: get thee on eBay, look for 1960's-80's A. Zildjians or Sabian AAs up for no-reserve auction (rather than Buy-It-Now), and be very patient in holding out for your dream price. Anything under $100 is still a score, as far as I'm concerned, and you may be able to do much better than that. Restrict yourself to normal cymbals— New Beat hihats (or Sabian Regular hihats), thin or medium thin crashes, medium rides. Some sort-of unpopular models may be extra cheap— Quick Beat hihats, Ping rides, Mini-Cup rides— as well as some heavier cymbals— Medium crashes and Rock rides. Cracks/dents = bad; do not buy. Keyholing = doesn't matter. Dirt = doesn't matter.

While it's possible prices may rebound into a more normal range, I would not plan on buying low and selling high and making a killing. And if you want to preserve this buyer's market, be chivalrous in your bidding— don't drive prices up trying to outbid people. There are plenty of other similar cymbals out there. Let the other guy get a great deal once in awhile.

USPS Priority rules, USPS Priority rules, USPS Priority rules

Request it. 

Have I ever mentioned that shipping by USPS Priority rules? It just smokes the private sector competition. I just received a pre-serial 17" Paiste 602 ride (a funny little cymbal) shipped from Hopkins, Minnesota on Wednesday the 3rd— it's now Friday the 5th. And I live way out west in Portland, Oregon, if you didn't know. Last week I received packages from Lima, Ohio and freaking Tallahassee, Florida which also took two days to get here. I think another package from Steve Weiss Music in Massachusetts might've taken an extra day.

Priority shipping (including the flat rate boxes) is the US Post Office's ordinary level of service for packages, roughly equivalent to UPS Ground in cost. UPS and Fedex, by contrast, take three days to move a package across the street, and a full five business days plus a damn weekend (unless the shipper gets it to them promptly at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning) to get something from further away.

Given an option, I always select USPS when shopping online; if there's no option, I request it in the “notes” field of the order form.