I would think the lathing not mentioned !i

Actually I reported the same lathing....but now I have taken pics because perhaps the lathing is different enough? Not very knowledgable on lathing (as much as others on here).

Take a look and tell me what you think. If that is it - conclusive that the finer the lathing, the drier it is? I thought that the lathing effected complexity.

John

I did not listen to the file, but I have a friend who got a used K Con and he was describing it as too dry and almost choked sounding.

He described the heavy patina (read: filth) and I suggested he clean it. Like you he had reservations as it has become tabu in recent years to clean cymbals.

Anyway, he cleaned it and loves it. It just needed to be cleaned. It was like removing tape from the cymbal.

If you need more wash after the bath, try a necklace on the cymbal as acpreview and if you like it, add a rivet or two.

You need to measure thickness of the metal. Preferably at 4 places in a line starting with the bell, then the bell bow transition (aka the bridge) the bow half way out, and the edge about 1" in. That will tell you if they have the same thickness and taper. All of the difference in weight could be hidden in taper if you don't measure it accurately. Some cymbals get much thinner towards the edge much more quickly than others. They tend to crash better and be more washy (other things being equal).

If the "dirty" one is drier that could just be because it is more hammered than the "clean" one is. At least it looks like that to me in your photos comparing lathing. The extra hammering would tend to dry it out, and possibly lower the pitch. You would need to account for this before putting dryness down to dirt and grime on one cymbal. UFiP made cymbals with either little hand work or substantial hand work -- as two different series in the same time period you are discussing. I've got two very hammered UFiP rides, and one showing almost no visible hammering.

The other measurement you need to pin down in a discussion of shape (and subsequently pitch) is the height of the profile. Higher profile implies higher pitch (all other things being equal). For this you need to measure at least the height of the mid bow area above a flat surface, and preferably the height of the bridge area above the flat surface as well.

That takes a fancy measuring rig to get good accuracy. If one cymbal is 1-2 mm or so higher than the other one then you have your pitch difference (as heard on your video) accounted for right there. Alas these are hard measurements to make without the right equipment.

A quick alternative is to measure the height of the bell (through the mounting hole) to the flat surface. You can use a toothpick. Stick it through the hole vertically down to the flat surface. Grasp it with your thumb and forefinger (to mark the depth), and then read that distance off against a finely graded ruler.

But of course that measurement includes the height of the bell, which itself may also differ between the two. To check that the bell height is the same above the bridge in those two cymbals you place your ruler flat across the mounting hole (as flat as you can get it) and use your toothpick to drop a vertical line to the bridge. Again you grasp it with your thumb and forefinger where the vertical line meets the ruler, then measure that distance on the ruler.

So you have lots of measurements to take before you have documented more about the shape of the two cymbals. I've mentioned toothpick but of course you can use anything which is small in diameter and straight.

Enjoy your homework.

I could create some diagrams of these measurements, but I hope you will understand just from the words. I think that there are illustrations of some of these on the Paiste or Sabian (or maybe Zildjian) site. Certainly the Sabian site has little diagrams of shape differences between cymbals which illustrate thicker or thinner metal, the degree of taper, and the profile height.

They could lathe cymbals to matching weights at will. Lathing is the only process that removes material !i

I will try to measure them up a bit.....but for right now -

I sure am glad I posted this before deciding (out of frustration) to clean and keep. More eyes on this has really helped as now that I feel it (run my hand around it) it is quite obvious that there is considerable hammering on the dirty one. The clean one has no bumps like the dirty one.

I will try to get around to measure - but this very well be solved.

Thanks - would love to hear more opinions/thoughts.

John

Which helps answer the original question in what way? Maybe I need it spelled out, but it doesn't seem to help us with why these two cymbals sound different given they weigh what they weigh.

Yes. As an indication of how much weight/metal can be removed I've recently seen a 22" 2901g Turkish blank reduced to 2669g by lathing just the bottom. That's about 230g off the weight due to lathing just the bottom. A similar amount could come off the top (so the cymbal smith tells me). But there is a limit. Go too deep in lathing and you can get into issues with removing too much of the harder crust and getting into softer material below. That reduces the nice stick sound.

As a further example he did lathe just the outer section off the top (maybe 1/2 inch in) which makes for a better crash (that's changing the taper of the outer edge as well as opening the cymbal up by removing crust). Just lathing the outer 1/2 inch dropped the weight another 15g. So that tells us a bit about what just changing the taper a bit can do to the weight. You can interpolate this to the weight removed in other sizes by using the ratio of areas. All we know at this point is that if one of the two cymbals is thinner and much more tapered, that might be enough to account for both the difference in weight and the associated sonic characteristics. We might not need to invoke grime as a major factor.

Note you need to be careful in applying this analysis to UFiP cymbals (as far as oven crust and how deep you can lathe) because the casting method of UFiPs is so different from the rolled blanks from Turkey.

I always try and get my information on the sonic characteristics of cymbals and how these relate to parameters such as weight and shape from expert cymbalsmiths. They are the ones who know because they work with them daily. Fortunately, I know a few cymbal smiths. Thanks to Craig Lauritsen for sharing this information with me. And for making me some very nice cymbals.

Yep,,,what Zenstat saidExcited

Dude, take a good look at the two pics. It is clear by the light reflection that one was is far more hammered than the other. With the same profile and taper, one is gonna have more uniform thickness than the other when cut to size if they both started out equal. The question is about there weight differences. Clearly it is not the patina. You could stack one on top of the other to see and hear shape differences.(it will rattle more if there is space between them when stacked). When it comes to lathing, two very similar cymbals will get more or less removed due to the thick and thin spots on the heavy hammered and you get more uniform removal from the less hammered one.

Even if these two are really close in profile and thickness They were both treated differently durring manufactureing !i So you have weight differences too !i I do not see a cymbal already cut to size and shaped to profile changeing the weight with hammering, but I do see it by lathing !i If they both started out the same, shaped the same and cut the same, on the lathing step, the heavy hammered one and smoother one will get different amounts removed !i