When I got my kit one of the things it came with was an old 15" vintage A (60's), with a big crack running through the stamp and about 3 inches towards the bell or so. The crack does not reach out to the edge, just a quarter inch past the stamp or so.
What I'm wondering is, since it's cracked and not really of resale value or all too playable the way it is (would work for a cymbal stack), what about getting it cut and modified? My first thought was making into to something like their newer "EFX" cymbals, since cutting out the crack and a couple other sections to match would make a pattern a lot like those.
The other possibility is to maybe just cut the cymbal down to smaller size, say 8 or 10 inches. I was reading about doing this (after seeing a Gavin Harrison vid where he has those chimes from cut down cymbals), and apparently a lot of other people have done the same with cracked cymbals and find they are great to use.
Any ideas on how this would work out? For cymbal cutting jobs like that, do people usually just do the cutting themselves or can you go to a drum shop or something of the sort and get it professionally done? I found the post Harrison made about how to go about making the cymbal chimes, but I wonder if it getting someone do it might be easier; I read something about shops that do fancy cutting work for cymbals (someone in an eBay cymbal thing said he had it cut in a shop by a machine or something to that effect >.<).
Any input or advice would be sweet, thanks!