From what I read in "The Cymbal Book" it seems unlikely. The book indicates Paiste didn't start making their professional lines at the Rendsburg, Germany plant until 1990 and that was the Sound Formula series.

It's interesting to read that Paiste needed to expand production but did not want to change the "workshop" atmosphere at Nottwil in Switzerland so they expanded the plant in Rendsburg, Germany.

All that said I still couldn't find anything that said they didn't make 602's in Germany.

If you read into the method of mfg. of those cymbals and Paiste's history , there are some clues that might help answer that. From what I understand, 602's were made from a sheet bronze. Paiste isn't a foundry, so they would have entered into a research and development agreement with some foundry , to develop the bronze formula. Undoubtedly, the foundry would have been sworn to secrecy , regarding the particulars of Formula 602. I don't know what it signifies; could be the 2nd in a series of alloys starting at 600 or there could be a hidden code in the numbers, designating the amount of certain trace metals in the alloy. Whatever the meaning; it likely was custom made into sheets ,in a foundry and shipped to Paiste. Shipping quantities of sheets of bronze would be a pretty expensive ship, so it would seem that the foundry would have been somewhere in Switzerland, supplying the Paiste plant in Switzerland. Curiously, Paiste established the Swiss workshop in 1957, the same year that Formula 602 cymbals were first introduced. It seems more and more likely that those cymbals were a Swiss operation.

Great read here...

http://www.moderndrummer.com/site/2011/10/what-you-need-to-know-about-cymbal-alloys/

From the article:

That is clearly the case today, with Meinl as an example, making almost exclusively computerized cymbals; from the making of the sheetstock, to the making of the stock control sheets.-----but it wasn't so much the case in 1957, when 602s came out. The alloy played a bigger role, certainly amongst the traditional makers.It was THE thing. Paiste and Meinl were unique in those days, in not making any cast cymbals. They relied on sheetstock for material and let's face it; were any of the cymbals made from sheetstock, in those days any good? You can be kind to Stambuls and Ludwig Standards and Stanoples and Supers and Meteors and Zyns and Ajax( amongst many) and give them some credit where some credit is due but in the final analysis, when compared to A and K Zildjian, Super Zyn, Zanchi, Ufip ( not many others) they were really mediocre and it was mostly due to the alloys being employed. I think the problem was that if a B 20 sheet bronze had been spun into cymbals , it would have cracked to blazes. Paiste , discovered a B-20 -like formula, that could be sheet cut and spun and resist cracking fairly well after being monkeyed with around the fire a little.( the early ones had a really huge crystal structure and were very brittle, so when compared to cast cymbals, they were still real crackers----I've cut a lot down). They were the first sheet cut cymbal that could really compete with a cast one. That was a big invention and only rotocasting can be seen ( within the casting fraternity) as an equivalent development.

Today, manipulation of the material has become a commonplace trump card but 50 years ago the alloy was still the kingpin.

I've never seen any quality evidence that 602 is done in the foundry in sheets, any more than Zildjian slugs are rolled out into sheets. It's about how the B20 is milled, not just that one is and one isn't. The only reason to care about "sheets" is if it implies that the Paiste B20 isn't rolled in multiple directions like Zildjian does.

I've seen video which shows that when they arrive at Paiste they are round blanks already cut to size. Very sensible for keeping shipping costs down. The main source of the "sheets" story, as far as I can tell, is Zildjian attack ads which refer to "cookie cutter cymbals". I'm still looking for a more reliable source than that. Perhaps you have one?

And the foundry name is SwissMetal.

http://www.swissmetal.com

The 602 series was discontinued when SwissMetal stopped making that material for Paiste. I have seen a couple of references for that info. Pasite-Only is a good place to follow up. I know of a few custom cymbal makers who have been looking to source B20 and they report that there are foundries in Germany and Switzerland these days who offer it. The fly in the ointment is you have to order a huge amount, which keeps boutique cymbalmakers going to Turkey for their blanks.

A reprise of the assumption about "sheet" and what this implies. Both Zildjian and Paiste use B20 which is rolled in a mill. What might matter is rolling in multiple directions. I'm still seeking evidence on that.

I'm also curious what you mean by "spun". If you are talking spin molding as a production method (as in Pinksterboor p113, p127) then that is not a technique used at Paiste for any of their higher lines (I'd say they don't use it at all, but I'm not 100% sure). The cup is pressed in hydraulically and the flat blank is then hammered into shape. If by "spun" you mean for purposes of lathing, then it would probably be better to refer to it as lathing since your usage will likely confuse some readers. If by "spun" you mean something else, you had better tell us because even I am uncertain what that might be.

Have you personally seen scientific reports of the crystal structure of Paiste 602 B20 compared with others (as in Pinksterboer p173 regarding Zanchi)? If so could you post some comparative photos or point us in the direction of the reports? I'd also like to know if a materials scientist went from a study of the difference in crystal structure to an analysis of probability of cracking.

And if we can't track down any reports I guess with all those cracked ones you get sent to cut down we'll be able to come up with some pieces to send to a lab. I'd be happy to contribute to an analysis being done. I've also got a small piece of Zildjian trans stamp I can put towards a comparison sample.

I'm not a materials scientist myself (PhD in Statistics -- studying the difficult route from evidence to interpretation) but I've gleaned that some B20 being more prone to breaking may also be due to the variation in the tempering process. So tempering (and possibly other factors) might have to be ruled out before you can put it down to details of the milling -- especially when the details of milling aren't presented.

Please excuse me if it feels like I'm undertaking too strong a questioning of your claims. I have no doubt of your sincerity and integrity, and your length of time with cymbals. I'm just thinking of future readers and trying to make sure that we leave a robust source of information.

The use of B-20 bronze as a base material for a given cymbal, is repeated again and again and again due to a lack of evidence that a given cymbal is not B-20.B-20 ,is taken as a norm but high variations in colour, hardness and crystal structure of various "B-20" cymbals indicates that various alloys have been used. If a small amount of silver is added to the bronze( as is supposedly the case at Zildjian) , then, that is not B-20 anymore, it is something else.

Paiste, for many years was an also ran in the cymbal trade , just as Zyn and Meinl were, until the 602 cymbal came out. I remember very clearly , when they entered the Canadian market and were hailed as an alternative to A.Zildjian ( in the mass market, because K.Zildjian , Zanchi ,Super Zyn and Ufip really only held tiny segments of it). Of course, at the time, no one knew or cared that they were made differently, just that they were very good cymbals but the buzz was that they had discovered a different, possibly better metal.

Paiste had pretty much done what up until then had seemed impossible----make a cymbal out of sheet bronze that was as good as a cast and milled cymbal. Paiste has been very defensive of their process, claiming that even sheet bronze is in fact cast , at some point and then milled into thin sheets and that there should really be no considered difference....but there is. Whether it's due to the multi-directionality of milled cast blocks or not doesn't really matter but cast cymbals seem to be different.

You see, we don't know whether the sheetstock used by Paiste is cold rolled or hot rolled and we don't know what the alloy is either. I am a microscopist and have put the fractured edges of a number of different cymbals under the scope and the crystal structure of the old 602s is coarser than that of any other cymbal, I have looked at.

I have also cut many different cymbals with crude hand tools, such as tinsnips and the Paiste material is harder than many most other cymbals and in the process of being cut , displays more lateral cracking and fissuring than other cymbals. The long and short of it is; the material is hardened more and tempered less than material from any cast cymbals I have cut into or examined microscopically.

Paiste is a bit secretive about their process too. The fact that 602 circular blanks arrive at the factory and then are pressed and hammered into shape means that another company is given license to provide a consistent base stock for the cymbals , which is another Paiste innovation----consistency. When individual ingots are being cast in house and then heated, milled , hardened ,annealed , hammered and hand lathed individually the cymbals will be different weights, thicknesses and different in all aspects that can make a cymbal sound different but when the blank is cut out of a sheet that has undergone an industrial production, a high level of consistency goes along with that production method. As the music industry grew, the need for consistency grew with it. A 22 year old rocker walking into a music shop wants an 18" 602 to sound just like the 18" 602 he heard elsewhere and fell in love with. That's what Paiste and Meinl hit on and why all of the other big makers now have lines of cymbals with which they try to attain that goal as well.

If that sheet bronze that Paiste came up with was not modulated in some way from a conventional 20/80 bronze formula, with something else that conferred natural tempering on the material, I don't think the cymbal line would have ever been produced because it would have been clear from the start that there was going to be a durability problem. Cast cymbals are constantly heated and annealed during the mfg. process and extensively hammered into shape . Something in that time honoured tradition makes the bronze more durable and resistant to cracking. Paiste managed to blend a metal from a B-20 base that almost came up to cast cymbal durability but not quite because they developed a reputation for cracking.

Paiste discontinued the line in ( 1969?) or thereabouts reputedly because the supplier discontinued the base stock. Now if those cymbals were profitable and after 12 years on the market during the burgeoning 60's , you would have thought that they would be, Paiste should have had no problem finding another supplier for B-20 stock .----but it wasn't B-20, it was formula 602 and no doubt the metallurgy involved in formula 602 was proprietary. If the making of those cymbals was profitable, then Swissmetal, you would think , would have been happy to continue making money from them. So, maybe they weren't so profitable , maybe their rep. for unreliability because the metallurgy wasn't quite right yet, had caught up with them and sales were slumping , or at least not up to expectations and as far as finding another supplier; well the formula was proprietary---proprietary to Swissmetal, likely.

Spinning. In comparing a 1950's Paiste Stambul cymbal with several older examples of 602s in my possession, I see almost identical very fine curved radial lines which stretch right across the bell from the hole to the valley where the bow begins. The same curved radial lines ,only now overlain with longitudinal curved hammer marks ( only on the 602s)continue at a slightly different angle towards the edge of the cymbal.

What are these marks from? In the case of the Stambul, it seems likely that they are from spin forming with the bell and bow of the cymbal being formed in separate stages, hence the slight angular change in the striations. If the bell of the 602 cymbals is formed by simple pressing, then why do these similar radial striations exist across the bell and then change direction across the bow?

Soooo... statisically speaking... or say we put this issue under a microscope.. what's the odds they ever made the damn things in Germany?

I'm just say'in... Cooked Egg

sorry, I can't see that far but-----the chances are very very very ----Zenstat, would you finish this sentence for me ?