Thank you so much, Drumaholic, for sharing these insights. I have learned a lot from you over the years regarding cymbals, old ks in particular. It is sad, indeed, when old craft traditions go the way of the dodo. But I guess part of the problem also is that not many of us drummers are prepared to pay the actual cost for good, labour intensive, highly skilled (manual) work on our pies and tubs. If so, this would only reflect general tendencies in consumer society.

Anyway, not to steal your thunder - I just wanted to thank you for your expertise, and just for being here all the time. Stay safe in the corona storm!

/Magnus

Your welcome, my friend.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but...............

Didn't Zildjian have to stop hand hammering around the mid-80's? If I remember correctly, OSHA came in and said that hand hammering was hazardous and detrimental to long term "hand health" so that they put the kibosh on hand hammering and Zildjian spent millions on developing new machines that replicated hand hammering.

Because Zildjian is the only (major) US Cymbal company, this doesn't apply to the other major players: Sabian (Canada), Paiste (Switzerland), Meinl (Germany) all the Turkish brands, Chinese brands etc.; no one else is under OSHA's jurisdiction, they are free to hammer away.

So, I guess their way of "keeping up" is to come up with these crazy (goofy) and decidedly machine looking hammering patterns (even though they are supposed to be hand hammered).

To me, Zildjian needs to do the same thing as Pro-Mark. Stop getting cute with all the marketing BS. Just get back to basics and concentrate on making great cymbals, just like DrumBob says......

Exactly, Magnus_N. I would pay more money for an old K reissue...IF it was like an old K. But, instead, Zildjian will spend millions on making inconsequential stuff that maybe only a fraction of drummers will actually buy and use. WHO uses these fad cymbal lines? I never see any of this stuff in the real world. I only see it at NAMM and places like this.

Zildjian should save their money and get some people and just friggin' start making some REAL cymbals again. Train some people. It can't be that impossible.

Impossible? No. But practical? Well that's another story. You see, the Turks along with Armenians have been making cymbals for hundreds of years. That very fact in combination the relatively cheap labor costs that exist in Turkey make up part of the difference between there and here. And with experienced people already in place with knowledge and practice in the art of making hand made cymbals, they can accomplish this cost effectively making it practical with reasonable profit margin. And so we've see the closest thing to "the originals" being made there and this still continues to this very day. But because the same set of favorable circumstances that exist there are just not present over here; then from a practical business perspective this is not a viable option that that Zildjian would be likely to consider. Although many of us might love to see it done right here, I'm afraid that at least for the foreseeable future, this is something that we can only wish for. But wishing will not necessarily make it so.

And I'll second that.

So Paul Francis? Are you here? The market place has a message for you.

You feel us? Only time will tell....

Do you think they can start hammering our own personal initials into cymbals with alphabet die hammers ?

As it is, the mind of Paul Francis is already a fertile enough source of idiocy. So please don't give him any more hokey ideas than he's already got.

Mine would look something like this.....

....

Yes, very nice.

I'm sure if you put in a special request, they could actually make one for you like that...but for a "nominal" extra fee of course.

The "OddBall" ride...yes that has a certain ring to it.