That's a thin letter 3 dot large stamp. These were mid 50's., so the seller was correct.

Beautiful Large Stamp model. Love the lathing and bell. That's a fine weight. The stamp being seen from the underside is common on the Large Stamp models.

If you are talking about the bend in the edge of the cymbal as seen in the profile shot, that is not closely related to the application of the die to create the trademark stamp. The bend in the edge just looks like a bend in the edge to me. Sometimes cymbals which are thin on the edge have that happen to them. Yours might be quite tapered and have thin metal towards the edge. At 2520 that's the average weight for these mid 1950s 22" cymbals, but they are known for being tapered so that more weight is in the bell and less at the edge.

What Mike is talking about is something which appears in some cymbals. I don't spot that on the bottom photo of yours, although maybe I'm just not seeing it. It is an oval depression associated with the piece of metal which pushes the cymbal onto the die. I'm not sure of the year when they started using a machine for this, but it probably goes back to the mid 1950s. Here is an example of what to look for:

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/block-22-bot-pucker.jpg[/img]

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/block-22-top-pucker.jpg[/img]

Billy Jeansonne (Classic Drummer/Vintage Drummer) on how the stamp was applied:

although it isn't yet clear when the use of a pneumatic machine began, rather than a guy with a hammer. My guess is that the machine was around by the mid 1950s, maybe earlier.

Thank you, everyone, superb expertise as always!

The cymbal is a very nice piece indeed and I'm glad to have it!

I`m not to sure "pressed" is accurate.

It would seem struck is more likely. The one on my ride very much looks struck because the die in his hand moved when he hit it. I`ve seen many double hit too.

There were several changes in the technology. The earliest ones were struck, and they were struck in separate pieces. We know that because sometimes they got one part uʍop ǝpᴉsdn, and there were variable alignments and different sized gaps between the pieces.

That changed when the Trans Stamps came in and the number of mis-strikes and doubling up of portions of the stamp goes way down. The Trans Stamps also appear to be a single die, or at least if there were separate pieces they were held together more accurately. The edges do tend to be more pressed in during the Trans Stamp era. This might be down to the curvature of the die not being quite optimal, or it could be a feature of the method of application (or both).

Beginning with the Large Stamps (mid 50s) we start to see the pucker. Not on all cymbals, but enough to make an impression :rolleyes: if you examine hundreds of cymbals from each era. The number of mis-strikes stays way down, but we also see that two of the Large Stamp dies commonly have a problem with a missing top portion: L1 aka hollow block aka block stamp; L3 (without the 3 dots in a triangle). In contrast L2 (with the 3 dots in a triangle) is almost always complete on top. We're talking over 99% of missing tops for L1 and L3 versus 99% present for L2. This suggests that the missing top portion might be die specific rather than a problem with the method of application.

The pucker itself continues through the late 50s (Small Stamps) and into the 1960s. The late 50s Small Stamps have one die which is usually missing the top portion (SSA), and another where the top portion is complete (SSB). Once again this suggests the die might be the issue rather than the method of application. By the 1960s and 1970s the problem with the missing top portion mostly goes away, although it can still be missing if the whole stamp is very lightly pressed in. There is still some evidence that the die is in several pieces bound together in a holder because different zones of the stamps sometimes get pressed in more deeply.

My pick is that the pressing (or as A Zildian themselves call it: "rolling in") of the die came in with the Trans Stamps. But that's just inference from observation of thousands of examples from different eras. I don't have a time machine to teleport back to the factory to observe what went on in different production eras. All of this is written up on my site, but not collected up in just one place as it is here.

So what die stamp is on your cymbal? Do we get to see a photo?

So there was automation involved eventually ? I envisioned a die similar to a J.E.W.lers die, A stamp block with interchangeable keys that let you spell or count as you go whatever you want that gets hit with the hammer. Not the kind that is fixed with counting dies that count as you go along, similar to the one used to put your VIN number on the tag in your car.

I always wondered about it. I was thinking there is a station in the factory that had a anvil type holder like the old phonographs that you would drop the cymbal on like a record LP and then strike the die by hand take it off and repeat as the line moves.

But you make more sense. Interesting how detective like you are. Your examples of the variables makes sense.

My "crash" has one side deeper than the other, like it moved and they didn'i get it flat down or something. Bill called it a early 70`s. I have a pic saved on my old drive and will try to get one up again.It made sense to me to think hand hit because I`ve seen many examples where the whole trademark is there but thinned on one side or partial trademarks because the whole die was not in contact leaving the missing or worn off sections. Not very automated results, more like hand worked.

A Zildjian says rolled ? I know that making a seamless snare shell by bull nosing a doughnut shape around another form is called "drawn" I wonder what rolled could be ?

Mechanization started to come in by the mid 1950s. Substitution of machine power for human muscles. There was still hand work in placing the cymbal and triggering the machine to put the stamp on. Same with hammering the cymbals (preliminary shaping by Quincy Drop Hammer).

Automation came in much later. I'm not sure if you would say automation for stamps until microprocessors were involved with the laser stamps starting in 1994.

The Zildjian reference to "rolling in" stamps comes from their advertising material for the 2016 A Avedis series.

The pdf is available via my web site by clicking here. I'm not responsible for what terms they use and why. My responsibility ends at correctly reporting what they say and providing the references.

Yes Zildjian went back to using a pressed in die stamp in 2016. I bought an 18" A Avedis just to be able to have hands on and do microanalysis on the trademark stamp, check the bell size, lathing, taper, etc. It's the 1960s short stamp brought back into use.

I've got hundreds of examples of flaws in the way the trademarks appear because that was part of working out what different attributes can tell us about the stamps and the technology. You need to examine enough of them to learn about what represents one off variation in the way they were pressed in and what represents something which has systematic variation which might indicate chronology or something else.

Here's a "70s stamp" example which is lightly pressed in except for the top half of the AVEDIS. That makes me wonder if the AVEDIS is able to move about slightly in the holder, and in this case the top portion of AVEDIS was a bit higher than the rest. If this same pattern appears in a large number of "70s stamp" impressions then perhaps the tool and die maker who created it made the top of the AVEDIS slightly too high. So we need to know how commonly this fault appears.

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/20-2258-stamp.jpg[/img]

It turns out there are stamps (both 60s and 70s) which show the thickness of the AVEDIS characters varying. They are quite thick at the top and thinning towards the bottom. Another hint of tilt within the holder and/or the die made slightly off. Yet these flaws are only found in some but not all of the stamp impressions. Then there are microalignment differences in how close the AVEDIS is to the ZILDJIAN co versus the dot dot dash dash at the bottom of the Ottoman section. Research on these is ongoing but not a high priority for me. I've got lots of other research projects on the go.

These sorts of stamping flaws are separate from the occasional cymbal which gets two trademarks, like this example which shows two different stamp eras overlapping:

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/double5060.jpeg[/img]

One of these is a late 50s Small Stamp. The other is an example the LS2 (Large Stamp with 3 dots) which started this thread off.

I didn`t mean two Trademarks struck, I meant one double struck like he hit it twice. Kinda like looking at it cross eyed.