Zenstat- Thanks for all the good info on these cymbals. The crack is not running along the lathe. It starts at the edge and has worked it's way inwards, but they still sound great! The hairline crack is causing the the cymbal to ((rattle)) and it's making a very trashy, metal on metal sound that I'm not loving, so I need to do something about that, maybe use a dremel tool to cut the cracked area.

I didn't know they were metric and I wasn't sure when Rotocasting started. These 15" Hi Hats show signs of rotocasting. They have a swirling pattern on the underside, but the stamp would date them pre 1970's and pre rotocasting so I'm stumped.

These cymbals also show signs of an ink stamp. It's very hard to see, but the pyramid stamp was also ink stamped onto these cymbals at one stage and I can barely make out the word Hi Hat too.

Any information on Pyramid ink stamp? If you watch this video and pause it @ 4:44 you will see an old advertisement for UFiP cymbals with the Pyramid ink stamp. I'm guessing these UFiP's that I have are from that era.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAqwSOxvlYE"]UFIP History - YouTube[/ame]

Thanks for some great info.

And thanks for that link. I haven't seen that one before.

Join the "stumped club" as far as rotocasting and the swirling pattern. I'm not sure we really have pinned down the first year for UFiP rotocasting, and I've come to believe that the swirling pattern people believe is a sure sign of rotocasting might be an artifact of lathing instead. But at this point all I've really got is questions.

Cheers Zenstat. I emailed UFiP with info about the cymbals and the guy over there told me that they are handmade hand-hammered cymbals made between the years 1945 and 1960.