Fllx these are awesome cymbals, UFIP are made in Italy, the class line are hand made!! and are rotocast made, I don't think they sound like 602's, but they do sound great, IMHO these are some of UFIPS best sounding and musical cymbals they make!!

You would be silly to not take that deal!

Though I'd say don't expect a Paiste.

So I bought this one just to satisfy my curiosity and it turned out to be much older than I expected. It is in fact a UFIP Ritmo from the 70-80's. The good part is that I got myself a vintage cymbal so to say. Haven't got too much time to play it yet but I have a feeling that it's a bit too dark for my taste. I will eventually come back with some more pics and impressions.

I own a 70's UFIP 16" crash cymbal I got when I bought my 1970 Luds. I don't know the model. It is a very unique sounding cymbal. I love it!!!

Cheers

[COLOR="Green"]Basically pretty much ANY UFIP eighties or earlier is gonna be a good cymbal - the vast majority having been handmade B20's (some rotocast - some not). Thing is - this discussion veers into comparing [COLOR="Red"]apples[/COLOR] and[COLOR="Orange"] oranges[/COLOR] - because if what you dig are contemporary Paistes (99% of which are NOT B20 alloy)- then an old B20 Italian is a completely different beast. Nevertheless the price was pretty good as these would fetch about $120 on eFlay.[/COLOR]

At the time the Ritmo series was available I believe another series was available called hand hammered,but in Italian,Mano something,or possibly solid.Anyway rotocasting started around 1977,so it could be rotocast.Ufip at that time usually had two lines,with one being more automated in the manufacturing process,like A Zil to K zil.A lot of people on these forums say older U.F.I.Ps remind them of sweet old A's from the fifties.I have a Class 20 med ride probably from the late 90's and the lathing lines look very by hand,your ride has pretty uniform looking lathing but the hammering looks irregular like alot of A's from the 50's,so it doesn't suprise that it is a little dark sounding.The only thing paiste like about my ride is the ping,it is on the bright side and a bit crystaline like paiste b 15 alloy,but the wash/partials/overtones lean much closer to the turkish side of things.But a nice ride for 80.00 .I would like to hear what you think about it after you have lived with it awhile.

I know that this is an old thread, but I just have to say that rotocasting didn't start in 77. That's a fallacy perpetrated on the Zanchi page of Wikipedia. UFIP was rotocasting from the beginning in the 30's. All of the families were using a similar process so it was easy for them to form an alliance. I have a small hole splash that Alberto Biasei says dates between 1940 and 1960 which shows the obvious rotocasting marks on the bell. When Fiorello Zanchi left UFIP, he took his sons and started another company but were still friends with the others and even used their factory to cast his new line of cymbals at times. After changing the spelling to Zanki, he first used rotocasting, then later abandoned it altogether for traditional puck casting. Maybe that was why their company failed? Dunno.

Love my UFIP pies.

Interesting. The authoritative source for rotocasting starting in 1977 is Hugo Pinksterboer, The Cymbal Book, p130. Hal Leonard Publishing 1992. As he states, casting had been in use for many decades before that but it was done vertically. Rotocasting machines came in at 1977 and allowed the casting to be done horizontally. This offered several production advantages.

Are you saying Pinksterboer has it wrong and rotocasting (not casting in cymbal shaped molds used vertically) came in much earlier? Note that the Italian method of casting in cymbal shaped molds is not like making "puck" shaped castings -- such as the Zildjian method.

I too have rotocast UFiP cymbals which show the telltale signs of rotocasting. I have 1950s-60s UFiP cymbals which don't. I even have a Zildjian or two you would think was rotocast from the traces on the bell. I've always presumed those are artifacts of something to do with the lathing process, rather than Avedis Zildjian secretly rotocasting some of their cymbals in the 1950s.

Love my UFiPs. And I'm always keen to learn new things.

** edit ** for future readers here's a link to a UFiP catalog from the 1970s (in French). I don't see any text evidence of "rotocasting" in it:

http://www.drumarchive.com/Ufip/

Let us know if you see text evidence of "rotocasting" in there. My French is out of practice (had to do it for my PhD requirements in the late 1970s! Boy that dates me doesn't it?).

Hey, anything is possible. I have only read excepts of Hugo's book, but understood him to say that they all started spinning them back much earlier. If they did, I'm sure the process changed over time as technology changed. I actually sold that splash recently to a Kiwi gentleman. I can see if I can find good pics of the bell area.