Post a photo if you can. Sometimes you can delay the crack spreading by drilling a small hole at the very end of the crack. It will eventually continued but drilling a small hole in it should slow the spread quite a bit.

Thanks for your reply. In fact it looks like someone did put rivets at the edges of the cracks to stop it. I then--stupidly?--added more rivets around the edges. Guess I was going for that dark jazzy sound ala the drummer for the Ahmad Jamal trio.

Looks like an intermediate stamp you have there.

The inner set of holes do look like somebody was trying to stop the crack from spreading by drilling the ends. They didn't succeed. That happens sometimes.

There is a relatively new technique called microfusion which can be used to fix cracks like that. I've had it done as a test on an 18" old stamp of mine. From this:

[img]http://black.net.nz/cym2014/kzil18-hole.jpg[/img]

to this:

[img]http://black.net.nz/cym2015/microwelds.jpg[/img]

Now you can see there was a chip which fell out at about 1 o'clock and was put back in. It seems like in the case of your cymbal you will end up with a hole where some is missing. Unless you have the missing portion?

Here is an example of a repair on a cymbal with a crack more like yours plus spiders at the mounting hole (Sharpie for scale):

[img]http://black.net.nz/cym2015/old-k-repair.jpg[/img]

The person who does these repairs is Jake Winebrenner: [email]jmwinebrenner@gmail.com[/email]

you can email him with pics and ask about the cost for having it done.

Dear Zenstat,

Wow. Thanks for your in-depth reply. I will get in touch with your cymbal repair man. I do love the feel and color of the old cymbal. Btw, I take it the medium stamp means it's a medium weight cymbal.

Thanks.

Looks like laser weld. A really good way to repair cracks because the heat affected zone will be as small as possible.

I still wonder about the implications of the welds and future cracks.

I have an older (mid 60's maybe) 20" that sounds nice and dark as it is and has a few cracks. I was thinking of turning it down to 19" but maybe this guy could fix it up for me...

Any feedback on the sonic change?

How does that laser welded cymbal sound? Better than before the procedure?

You can put the motor in the bell and it`ll make an interesting clock with a heck of a chime..........

In general the procedure does recover some of the original sonic properties. But it depends on what kind of cracks are being repaired. This one had lost a bit of top end given that the bell wasn't producing the full upper frequency range. I'm told that has improved, but I haven't heard it myself since the repair.

Instead of coming straight back to me I've sent it on a tour of interested people in the USA. I might not see it until next year. But I have asked the people who are checking it out to record it and I hope we'll hear some "after" sounds pretty soon.

Here are before sounds (just seeing how it fits sonically with my 22" Kontro).

[ame]http://black.net.nz/cym2015/KontroOldK.mp3[/ame]

[ame]http://black.net.nz/cym2015/KontroOldK1.mp3[/ame]

Yes I realized I should have said "laser microfusion welding" after you posted. I'm getting used to just calling it "microfusion" for short. Very fine laser work which uses the original B20 material of the cymbal to stitch it back to itself. Pinpoint sized short bursts of light so that there isn't too much heat which keeps the metal from turning too brittle (due to loss of tempering).

As to how long the repairs will last, we don't know yet because not enough years have passed since the technique started to be applied. Hence my public experiments and sharing of information. We've started the clock ticking. A few people with repaired cymbals are reporting good results so far. It would probably be good to get a more modern B20 cymbal repaired (not potentially so valuable if lost) and circulate it among some heavy hitters to stress test the method. Just thinking out loud here...

And I've mentioned the sonic change in my previous post and given some "before" files. Still waiting on "after" files...as I note there.