Sorry the above image of the trademark appears rotated. It's just the way the site uploaded it.

Nice looking hats! That does appear to be a 60's stamp from what I see. At the inception of the New Beats in the 60's, they were ink stamping just the bottom hat. Bet these sound great!

Mike

Thanks, Mike. They really do sound great! I can imagine they would be good for just about any style of music. Great "chik". 15's are nice to play. I must take note of the weights. I'd guess they're a light over a medium heavy. Just nice!

Brief history of New Beats including the ink styles:

http://black.net.nz/avedis/new-beats.html#NBtop

Yours have first generation ink as expected given the 60s trademark die stamp. It would help me to know whether the height of that stamp is closer to 1 3/16" or 1 1/4" or 1 1/2".

That page has weight ratios and plots for 14" (the most common size) but since that was written I've got enough 15" data to do those also. I haven't got time to do the pretty pictures by different production eras, but the ratio for 15" is 68% (top to bottom weight) and varies from 60% to 77%. That's based on a sample of 27 pairs. If you can get the weights for yours I'll add them in to my database. Average weights are: 1036g for the top and 1522g for the bottom, but as we know from the 14" data there is lots of individual variation plus changes in weights over the production eras.

The 15" results are similar to the 14" size which have a ratio of 71%, and varies from 57% to 86%. The 14" data is currently based on 97 pairs.

I also have expected prices for these, but again haven't had time to do the analysis and publish the results. I've been swamped with "real world" work for some time now. But as always, all my raw data is free to anybody who wants it. It comes in spreadsheet form. You don't have to take my word for anything or wait for me to get to a new analysis. Just ask for the raw data.

The only thing I haven't got data on is the degree of taper near the edge. I bought myself a relatively expensive deep throat micrometer/thickness gauge so I could start documenting cymbal thickness at the bell, at a few points on the bow, and at the edge. But when it arrived it didn't work. I got my money back but I haven't begun the process of finding a replacement. The whole experience sort of put me off. So I can't say about extra thin edges being due to taper being added after yours left the factory. What I can say is that adding extra taper would be done with lathing, so if yours don't show a difference between the lathing on the outer edge and the lathing elsewhere on the bow then they are probably factory. But that probability might change with knowing the weights, and having good pictures of the lathing top and bottom. I don't see anything suggestive of re-lathing in that profile picture, but it isn't really the right angle for picking up lathing variability.

Thanks as always, Zenstats. Very informative and thorough. I think the edges of these cymbals may have been "sharpened" with a knife sharpening tool of some sort in order to get rid of any rough edges, bit I can't say for sure. It doesn't seem like much metal has been shaved off as both cymbals fit together beautifully and they measure 15" across. I didn't pay attention to any lathing or hammering. They have a deep patina and one or two green spots. Just the way I like them. Would you think these could be late 60's - Early 70's? I see no trace of ink on tip cymbal, but I believe these to be a factory matched pair of hi hat cymbals. Thanks again.

Here are some pics of the lathing on top and bottom and a photo showing the size of the stamp. Just ignore the keyhole, :)

Thanks for the additional photos. So that stamp looks like it is not the 1 1/2" version. Bill Hartrick (Drumaholic) puts a "later 60s" time on the taller stamp version. He's never published his evidence for this, so I don't know how many well provenenced cymbals his interpretation is based on.

I don't have strong enough evidence to narrow down the production years that closely. With that ink your hats can be from 1963 (when they started producing them) through whenever they started putting on the 1970s trademark die stamp. That change from the 60s stamp(s) to the 70s stamp is also not pinned down to a given year. As I always point out calling them "60s" vs "70s" is a convenient shorthand. It doesn't mean that at midnight on the 31st of December 1969 Zildjian destroyed all existing stock and issued new cymbals with the "70s" stamp from 1st of January 1970. The natural process of distribution means that you would expect cymbals with both stamps to turn up with good provenence (purchase orders, association with purchase of new drum kits, recollections of purchase year, correlating prices written on the bottom with published price lists).

Looking at that last photo it does seem like the very outer edge might have been modified a bit. I've annotated what I'm seeing in your picture. Others may have a different interpretation. I claim no special expertise in this area because I'm not a cymbalsmith.