Most vintage cymbals in use by professionals drummers, including my son, do not have their patina removed. This is generally purposeful and not a result of laziness. The overwhelming number of vintage cymbals available for sale are not shiny. Many, many posts of owners of vintage cymbals who have removed the patina and regretted the change in sound afterwards can be seen on a variety of drum and cymbal sites. Clean them if you want, they're your cymbals after all. But most drummers, especially older ones with extensive experience with true vintage cymbals will avoid it..

Wow! Out of 10 responses, only one person advocates cleaning them for sure. While this is an issue of taste and preference, I will not be cleaning them. The most significant part of the argument is that it leaves the the next owner the choice they can make and no regrets possible.

Thanks so much for the feedback. In the past, I have sold cymbals w/o cleaning them for this very reason, though have always felt concern when posting them up there that I would be perceived as lazy and implying lack of care. My paradigm has shifted. Meanwhile, the 80s Rock hats have been cleaned. They simply are not that 'vintage' and were not significantly patina(ed).

Any one of my current cymbal stock (70HHs, 80s Rock HHs, Paiste 3000 18in crash) can be bought for....check my For Sale post....will be lowering the pricing later tonight.

Thanks again so much for your advice and throw my a PM or email if interested.

Thanks,

John

If a cymbal is clean when you buy it and you bought it because you liked it then keep it clean. If it slowly gets dirty and you adapt along with it and still like the way it sounds after 40 years of grime, then keep it grimey. If you buy a filthy cymbal because you liked the way it sounded, then keep it filthy.

Dirt happens slowly. Cleaning happens immediately. Most people don't notice changes over time so much but respond instantly to quick change and most people are creatures of habit ,too.

I've cleaned a lot of cymbals because I am interested in the purity of their tone(s). Generally, cleaning a cymbal releases overtones, brightens the primary note,increases sustain, improves it's aesthetics(both when still and in motion),sharpens the zones and definition between them, brightens the bell,improves projection and extends it's colour pallet. A dirty cymbal may well have changed into a more mellow,controlled beast and if that is what you fell in love with, then don't touch it but if you want to understand the completeness of a pie's potential and it's latitude, then clean it.

All valid points. But the key for me is [COLOR="Red"]"If you buy a filthy cymbal because you liked the way it sounded, then keep it filthy."[/COLOR] For me its all about the sound. I have also purchased a number of new cymbals in the last 10-15 years and they were all shiny when new of course. However, where we differ is that I consider the development of a patina over several years as part of the "break in" process. For me, as a jazz drummer, darker and mellow with a woody stick is better than bright and harsher with a metallic stick. Perhaps if my focus, and my son's, was on a different musical form my opinions might differ.

Most vintage Istanbul Ks and many A's up to the 1960's tend to have the sound I crave. I can't stand the sound of virtually any A made in the last 30 years, There are some modern K's I like, but they are mostly relegated to the KCon line. The majority of the new cymbals I've purchased are hand hammered Turkish designs from a few of the current firms like Bosphorus and Istanbul (Agop and Mehmet).

Tdennis indicates my comparison of vintage cymbals to antiques is not valid. I respectfully disagree. Many old Ks, and A's from the 40s and 50s, are bought by collectors who own so many vintage cymbals they could never reasonably be expected to play them all regularly. They are one form of a collectible antique. I myself own several cymbals, that while not terribly valuable, are old and fairly rare. I don't play them, but I'm not selling them. I am selling a new stamp old K from the late 60's which has an absolutely beautiful golden patina. It doesn't even sound that great to my ears, but I will still probably get 50% more than what I paid for it, even in this market, for its value as a collectible. It will not be cleaned by me.

Fetishized old cymbals, used for trade, display, & status can be kept in any condition one desires. My concerns are w/ working instruments. (Turkish K's, Constantinoples & A's are not sacrosanct). And Patina is not the same as dirt & grime. (Look again at the OP's cymbals).

Also, I'm not saying one should clean before selling(that is a separate issue). I'm just advocating habits for one's own set. Calfskin's detailed list of clean cymbal qualities is as eloquent as one could get.

Opinions vary.

I apologize for having introduced a comparison which may have pushed this thread towards "preposterous discussions".

Original title, "To clean or not to clean, (cymbals). The one tangent may have been about Art.

No apologies necessary. After all this was just a discussion of different approaches to cymbal care, and not even a heated discussion at that. There was no rancor and no name calling. The fact that the participants may not all agree on this particular subject is of little importance in the scheme of things. We are members of a relatively small fraternity and share a mutual interest in drumming, and more specifically, vintage gear. If we all agreed on everything, how boring would that be?

It is very hard to separate patina from "grunge" or filth. If one decides that patina is natural aging and weathering and desirable and wants to keep it ,then the cymbal would have to be cleaned quite regularily with detergent and water or perhaps alcohol, or mineral spirits to get rid of the dust,fly ****, nicotine,airborne cooking oil,human oils,scurf,sweat,nosedrips,potsmoke,fingerprints,wood dust,cat dandruff,tears and ****gas-----all of which could be collected on there over a period of 50 years or more. So, you need to clean cymbals at the very least to preserve the patina. -----"I love your ride technique and sound, man. What IS your secret"???--- "u don no, man but evrywons bin sayin that since '57, wen the horse p*ssed all over mu simbuls"

It is true that modern cymbals don't have it , when compared to the older K's, A's, 602's etc. etc. but that is a separate issue. They have refined the metallurgy , in order to hit specific markets with a predictable product. The Turkish hand hammered products resemble old K's because they are made like old K's----not because they have patina.

Cleaning cymbals doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing. You can remove surface dirt and grime and still keep the patina.

Most people do not know the chemistry behind dirty cymbals. The shmutz is just one factor. The OTHER thing that happens is that the dirt reacts with airborne moisture and produces acids that etch the cymbal surface, as well as forming the basis of copper salts that grow microscopic, tree-like "dendrites" from the cymbal surface. The dirt, etching and dendrites combine to form the trademark dull surface. However, you CAN just remove the dirt. This is what Groove Juice does, but it is somewhat aggressive. I use Cymbal Doctor Step 1 cleaner. It does NOT touch the patina, but the dirt will rinse off. Because the surface is etched and microscopically rough, it won't take too long before dirt again accumulates in the invisible nooks and crannies, but there may be a slight brightening of tone.

That's just one way of cleaning. You can go all out and polish/buff them too. It's not "wrong" to clean cymbals. It all depends on what you want out of them. Bronze DOES age and break in, the factors I discussed have more to do with the aging/mellowing than the metallurgical factors.