CYMBALISTIC: An interesting part of being a very small cymbal company, like Cymbal & Gong, is that there is some variance in the product over time. Day to day there may different guys at the shop, possibly under different production pressures; over time employees come and go. Cymbal making is an inexact art to begin with, and when you’re manufacturing four to six times a year, rather than daily, they’ll tend to be consistent within batches, but somewhat varying from batch to batch. It has been that way the whole time.
There was a period when they were consistent to a fault, when choosing cymbals to sell on Cymbalistic became rather uninteresting. I tell people about picking my own 20″ Holy Grail, and after playing about fifteen cymbals, I chose basically at random; I pulled the two lightest ones and chose the one that was the best pitch to go with my other cymbals. It’s a great cymbal, but they were all great, and very similar.
Anyway, with a new batch of cymbals I just played, things are trending in some really interesting directions. The medium-ish weight cymbals are sounding better than ever, as are the lightest cymbals. There are also more funny cymbals— “opportunities”, I call them— I get excited when a problematic cymbal comes up. I have Tim put a heavy patina on it, and it turns it into an awesome, funky, old sounding cymbal. Some of the best, most individual, “K like” cymbals have come about that way.
I’m most excited about a couple of things I special ordered. There are two recent thin 22″ American-style Holy Grails, with a heavy patina that are really interesting— they were very wild in their natural state, and with a heavy patina became sort of rougher versions of a Tony Williams cymbal. I actually just shipped one of them to Germany, here is the remaining one, “Mick”:
I wanted the same type of cymbal in 20″, but what I got were not that at all, they actually had this lovely soft quality I’ve been seeking for years— like a couple of Ks that were around when I was in college, or like some of Mel Lewis’s cymbals. It has been an elusive quality, and they hit it with these two cymbals. I just hope we can get them to duplicate it.
One of the cymbals I’m talking about is in the middle here; on the left is a rather stout 18, on the right is Mersey Beat, that is currently getting a heavy patina. I don’t know if the quality I’m talking about translates on an iPhone, the way I’m playing it here— I’ll get the cymbals home soon and make more video of them:
We’ve been noticing the differences in quality from tension in the bronze. Bosphorus cymbals get their very soft, glassy quality from having very low tension. In the current round of Cymbal & Gong, there seems to be unusually high tension, causing some jazz weight cymbals to play a little more like medium-weight cymbals. There are a number of very nice, powerful 22s in stock right now. I think my two special order 20s were in a sweet spot between the two; a softer tonality, but with body.
More soon! More video of the new cymbals, and of the new batch generally coming, and a few new special selections at Cymbalistic.