Yes, I think once the oxidation really kicks in and the cymbal has a green hue, sonically it will change. What made me want to really oxidize my New Beats was having played a friends set that had been really oxidized. The sound was a bit softer than my set.

Wouldn't you think Paiste would make a paste... ;)

I used to use Brasso..but no longer polish them... Have tried lots of compounds over the years with no ill effect. nowdays I just keep them clean with some fresh lemons and Bi Carbonated Soda... usually follow that up with some Mr Sheen...

Cheers

John

I always clean my cymbals with Paiste cleaner as I prefer the sound for recording, I doubt it makes a huge difference in real terms but there again I have always preferred brighter sounding cymbals.

Nice little Avedis Trans Stamp cymbal you have there. Did you realize how old it was before you stripped off the patina?

http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-gallery.html#trans

BarKeeper's Friend is an acid so make sure you rinse thoroughly so it doesn't oxidize again quite quickly. I use a simple coating of paste wax to keep the air away from the surface of a cymbal which has no patina if I want to keep it that way. And Paiste will also sell you something to coat cymbals to prevent oxidation.

Thanks Zenstat!!

...and yes...yes I did know what the cymbal was before cleaning. I hemmed and hawed over doing it for quite awhile. If it was an even tarnish I would have left it alone. Ultimately, I couldn't deal with the giant stain.

Of course I opened a can of worms on myself, thinking I may want to clean the rest of the cymbals in that set up...which are a combination of other trans stamp, block and small stamp As.

I do also have a set of 60's Zildjians that are pretty well tarnished. I'm not as emotionally attached to their sound (that makes me sound normal still....right?!?!) and might....might experiment with them.

They might get a cleaning. If their sound changes, and not for the better (is that really even possible?) I'll leave the older stuff alone.

Richie, that's a cool looking cymbal in a hard to find size. Have you considered doing some artificial patina on it to help match your other trans-stamps? Shouldn't be too difficult since there are no ink stamps to worry about. Dip it in a solution and let it age for awhile...

Good luck, Gary

Having never cleaned cymbals in thirty years, I now find myself converted. I have a newer K crash, which came to me all shiny, regular use and handling soon builds up, so I decided to take the plunge and clean. This has turned out great. Lemon and bi-carb is all I will use, so as to be not too abrasive as I possibly can. I traded an old snare for some istanbul XIST for practice\Spare hats, and clean these to keep them nice and shiny.

My 2 cents ,if you have $40 bucks ,Sabian will refinish and relogo including return shipping.

I paid $80bucks for these plus $40 to clean and relogo.

I hate all those big black logo's and think they make even top end cymbals look cheap.

You may love them but I like the small stamps and a small logo ala my Dream cymbals.

The thing about Cymbal cleaning is that once you clean one for the first time, you are then pretty much locked in to maintaining it for it's life.

Some years back, a lot of large green blotches began appearing on my nice Zildjian ride & crash... finally after some investigative observation I worked it out. We were doing a lot of party cruises on Sydney Harbour, we would always be jammed up into the bow section and forced to play in extreme "close quarters"... Turns out our 6ft something bassist was playing partly over the cymbals and dripping a concoction of sweat, aftershave, and whatever else secretes from a Maltese diet all over my gear. When I told him he just laughed his head off.Laughing H

Cheers

John