Originally Posted by zenstat

Twins. Only their mother could tell them apart...

So just an update on the bell diameter of the Sweet Ride. I've done some scaling of photos from both the top and bottom and it looks like the Sweet Ride has a 5.5" bell not the 6" I was told. I might try scaling from a few more photos, but if anybody has a Sweet Ride can you measure the bell diameter for me? I've also got some photo examples of smaller diameter bells which I'd like to bring together with the 5.5" and the 6" to illustrate the differences. The smaller bells are from 1950s cymbals which isn't too surprising.

There is idle talk about smaller bells on 1950s (or older) cymbals now and again, but it isn't very informative because of lack of specificity. We need to know what production era cymbal, what weight class, any model ink (or other telltales), and a measurement of bell diameter. Once we have something like that for 100 20" cymbals then we can look at whether the proportions of 3.5", 4", 4.5", 5", 5.5", 6" bells changed in different production eras for 20" diameter cymbals. I've already collected enough evidence to show it isn't some black and white thing but rather one of proportions because there are a range of bell diameters on 20" cymbals from the same era. We know about a 5" ride bell, a 5.5" crash and crash/ride bell, and the occasional 4" bell turning up (3 or 4 in my records just quickly glancing through). I've even seen a 4" bell on a 22" Trans Stamp, and have two records of a 6" bell on a 20" (1970s era) although I need to go and remeasure those. So there is bell variation out there for a given diameter. Although mostly it is "bigger cymbal gets bigger bell" there is a bit more to it once you factor in model variations.

As Quasimodo says, "The bells! The bells!"