Here ya go folks. Photos of the stamp and the ink stamp. No photo of the bell hole. It is 7/16, the small hole.

Have at it! Like all of us, just trying to figure date of production and value.

looks like a late 50's stamp to my eyes.

mike

BTW...........What is the "Trans" or " Transition"?

Is that a date when something switched over?

Company ownership?

Stamp changes?

Wha?

please...........

Hi Mike,

How do you tell that so quickly?

This cymbal looks old to me. Never been cleaned and kept in amazing shape. The ink stamp is faded but as you can see, readable.

I have purchased many 70's and 80's cymbals in the 70's and 80's and it looks like it might be vintage to those times to me, more like 60's or earlier. However it does not look hand hammered to me. The hammer marks are too consistent and not very deep. I Played the cymbal and it did not blend with the rest of my cymbals.

Still puzzled and working the magic.........

Zen, thanks for your hard work on this. Im gonna read the stamp PDF tonight.

I haven't mentioned why it is called a Transitional (nickname Trans) Stamp in my writeup because I don't know. I suspect only Bill Hartrick knows since it is his coinage.

The dates don't line up with a change in company ownership. There isn't anything in particular that I know of which means that stamps before then were somehow different from stamps after then.

The transition might relate to when something else in production methods changed. I'm thinking of entirely hand hammering for shape vs later methods which used a Quincy drop hammer as part of shaping. But I really don't know.

We'll have to wait for the master.

And are those hammer marks on the bottom of the cymbal? If so that is a landmark change (also mentioned in Bill Hartrick's original article towards the end).

Yes looks to be a perfectly acceptable late 50s small stamp to me as well. Meets the vertical alignment and bold criteria, and has no three dots.

Read the PDF and look through my gallery of stamps. We can see it because we've learned by apprenticeship. I've tried to codify some of the rules of thumb we use in the web pages I've linked to. As yet very embryonic, but it is a start.

More info: More pics:

Two photos. The one with the flatter bell is my recent find. The cymbal with the 7/16" hole and stamp (photo posted earlier in this blog thread) scroll up