looks a bit Pistoian to me.

i have no idea what that means. i'm almost afraid to ask....

mike

No stamps or marking that you can show us? At least a couple of closeups?

Is this cymbal thick, rigid, flat w/ little contour, & a plate like metallic sound ?What is the size ?

bought it but it hasnt arrived yet guys. its a 16. wish it was larger. i'm a 18-22 player usually. sure looked good in the pics though. we'll see.

mike

here is one more pic....

mike

I have a few cymbals which are quite similar to this. None are 16's but I have two 15's and a bunch of 14's which I have weighed ,tested and matched as pairs. All of them display the arced radial ridges in the bronze , created during rotocasting and the occasional chattermarks caused during lathing.

My assumption for these is that since they are unmarked, except for the occasional ,little 3/8" Made in Italy stamp on a couple of them, is that they were sold as generic cymbals, to music distributors, that did not have a Ufip distributorship. That way, Ufip could sell more cymbals and not step on any of the toes of their Ufip distributors. " YOU are the exclusive UFIP distributor"

It is also possible that they are Ajahas that have had the ink stamp under the bell worn off. On one of mine, if you get it in the right light, you can just barely make out marks that could fit into the Ajaha ink stamp.

Could also be an unmarked Zanchi----not so sure on those existing, unmarked. I have a couple of very early Toscos, made and stamped for Sonor. In ways , it more resembles those, due to the pronounced chattermarks, which seem to grace Toscos, more than Ufips but one of the principles involved in that venture claims , that they did not rotocast----but how about buying rotocast blanks from UFIP?

I have Good News and Bad News:

The Bad News: It is a "generic" cymbal, that came with the PDP "EZ" kits.

The Good News: Most of them sound really good!

I know this because I have a few of them. Guitar Center (about 5 or so years ago) was selling the PDP EZ Cymbal packs for $50. It included two 13" hi-hats and a 16" crash. I think they are/were made in the Wuhan factory. I sifted through the packs (they had many) and picked out a few gems! The crashes were super thin, dark, and very heavily hammered (like in photo 2 of the underside). They had the same lathing also. The 13" cymbals that came with it were terrible hi hats (way too thin and trashy, and most had bad heavy spots) but they made excellent splashes/small crashes. I still have a few of them too.

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts when you get it. Expect it to be super-thin, but also expect it to sound pretty darn good. For as thin as they are, they actually project pretty well. Sometimes I use the two 16's I have together and they sound great, and project and record (live) really well. And when I say super-thin, I mean SUPER-THIN! Like "you can turn it inside out with your thumbs" super-thin. I have hit mine pretty good, and have never had a problem with denting, warping or otherwise morphing.

A word of caution: While most of these sounded really good, some were real clunkers that were stiff, harsh tone pieces of you know what! Those were by far the minority, though. Here's keeping my fingers crossed for a "gem" for you!

interesting. --it does have a lot more hammering than any of the Italian stuff, I have seen. i have seen some generic Chinese stuff up here to. some of it as you say is pretty good----and has up until now been pretty cheap.