Darkening those brand new cymbals!

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dg8k

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Let me first give you a little bit of background information:

I've been playing music for a little over half a decade now, and have found myself over the last few years getting more and more into drumming. I have a kit (even if it's on the rather cheap side), and some nice cymbals that my friend who became a drummer before me (and somewhat of a mentor on the subject) has loaned me indefinitely.

The setup I'm currently using for my hihat is a Zildjian Mastersound hat top with a Wuhan S series medium hat bottom. Crash #1 is an A Custom 18" crash.

Here's the problem:

I just purchased a brand new ride and secondary crash to go with the setup I've been using. The ride is a Wuhan S series 20" medium heavy ride, and the crash is a Wuhan S series 16" medium crash. As for the "why the hell would I buy these Wuhans?" question, the simple answer is: The same friend who's lending me the hats and crash #1 has the same cymbals (among many others), and I was honestly shocked to hear how good they sounded, especially coupled with the price (about $100 for the pair).

So, as I was saying, the problem is, I just got these brand new cymbals, and to be blunt, they sound awful. Not what I was expecting at all. But the thing is, I can hear that the awfulness is isolated in their shrill, overpowering brightness. I have a decent ear from producing music for the last few years, and I can hear a pair of darker, richer, more mellow and friendly cymbals waiting to come out of their hiding place, just so long as these things don't sound so fresh from the factory.

I spent a couple of hours today doing various things to "break in" these cymbals, with some fairly satisfying results. I had never before heard the myth about burying cymbals, but my instinct with these was to get them as dirty as possible. This idea came from my observations about the hi-hat top that's currently on my kit. When my friend first purchased it, it sounded BAD. Now, maybe 2 years later (and all shininess long gone), it couldn't sound better. It's everything I could hope for. But getting back to the new ride and crash, I gave them the works. I tried my best to put month upon month of rock and roll into them in just a few hours. I rubbed my hands all over them, quickly noticing the factory buffing dulling away. I rubbed tomato sauce from my Subway chicken parmesan sandwich all over them. I rubbed wax from candles on them and lit candles under them to coat them with smoke and wax from the air. I poured beer on them and took them outside to throw them around in the dirt. I hit them as hard as possible with the side of the stick on the edge of the cymbal for minutes on end, rotating them around as I went.

And when I was done for the day, a difference could be heard: They sounded significantly better than when I first took them out of the box. They're mellower and softer, BUT, they're not good enough. They're not even that close to how I can imagine them sounding, how I remember my friend's identical cymbals sounding.

I'm going to stick with them because I'm not a rich man, and I'm confident that in time they'll become much more, if not fully like the cymbals I want to hear on my drumkit, but damnit, I want to record with them, and SOON! So, the whole point of me writing all this is to open the discussion on aging and altering your cymbals, specifically to mellow them out (A LOT). What works? How much does it work? Exactly how do you do it? How long does it take? What doesn't work? Be as specific as possible. It's only a matter of time before I take a hammer to them (which I have no experience doing).
 
You could condense the 'breaking in' period by replicating its abuses. In other words, you have to treat it like any other drumer would, you just need to speed things up a bit. The first thing you're going to need to do is go to McDonalds and purchase 3 large orders of french fries. When you get them home, instead of eating them you need to pulverize them between your fingers. After that you'll need to dump the contents of 23 cans of budweiser into your greasy palms and rub them together for 3 minutes. When that task is completed you'll need to find the sweatiest, fattest, and nastiest chick chick around and give her a *full* body massage. From the head to those dirty fat feet. After you're finished go directly to the cymbals and execute the 'wax on, wax off' method of washing cars, karate kid style, but with your hands directly on the cymbals. Do this for about 6 to 7 hours, they should be well broken in by then. If not, at least they'll be real fragrant. Hope this helps, willis.
 
Your problem is that you're expecting something out of these cymbals they just can't give. Even though the Wuhans are "turkish" style cymbals, they are still made with chinese teqhniques. They aren't cast the same way, they aren't formed the same way and they aren't hammered the same way. Have you noticed the amount of white noise they create? Set one one a flat surface and you'll notice the edges aren't true.

Even if you spent a year trying to age these it still wouldn't be enough. A cymbal has to have the general character you want before you age them and even then they will only darken so much. Oxydization and vibrational changes happen over long periods of time and only affect a cymbals overall sound maybe 10-15%. Hammering by hand is risky and usually only makes the cymbal sound more dry.

Buy cymbals that have the sound you want.
 
To my knowledge, they did sound good.

The reason I bought these in the first place is because a friend of mine already owned the same models and I was very impressed with the way they sounded. I'm not expecting these things to sound like K's, all I want is for them to sound like the year-old ones that my friend has. That being said, my intent is to speed up the natural aging process because I want to record with them ideally in 2 weeks rather than a year.
 
dg8k said:
The reason I bought these in the first place is because a friend of mine already owned the same models and I was very impressed with the way they sounded. I'm not expecting these things to sound like K's, all I want is for them to sound like the year-old ones that my friend has. That being said, my intent is to speed up the natural aging process because I want to record with them ideally in 2 weeks rather than a year.
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Have you tried the willis method of cymbal aging? That really is the only thing that's gonna work for ya.
 
ez_willis said:
Have you tried the willis method of cymbal aging? That really is the only thing that's gonna work for ya.
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Maybe adding bodily fluids would accelerate it a little more. :D
 
PhilGood said:
Maybe adding bodily fluids would accelerate it a little more. :D
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I think fat-chick-sweat is a body fluid, I got it covered. Thanks for watchin' my back for me though.
 
i think you should buy a pizza and put the cymbals in the pizza box, then flip the box over so that the pizza's on top of the cymbals and then take them outside and run water over the whole thing for a while.
i doubt that would do anything for you, but it would be entertaining for your neighbors.

actually what you could do is this.......this is how they age metal guitar parts on those aged guitars and the tom murphy aged guitars.

get some muriatic acid. a gallon of it should cost you around 10 bucks maybe a little more, maybe a little less. call around to your local construction supply places.

anyway. poor the acid in a plastic pan like some people use to soak there feet in. sit the cymbal on top of it for a couple hours, maybe a full day. then flip it over and do it again. you should be able to see it corroding the cymbal pretty quickly. i doubt it would take more than a full day for each side, but probably less.

don't do it in your house or garage though. keep it outside because over time the fumes will corrode other metals.

you could also get some rubber gloves. the type that you buy for doing the dishes will be fine. you could try dipping the cymbals.............or you could buy a spray bottle and spray each cymbal. expect to throw anything you use to hold the acid in away though. spraying is is probably a bad idea thought because you really don't want to get it in your eyes.

then when you're done, you just need to clean them with water for a while.
 
actually a safer, but more time consuming way would be to buy some coke and a pan big enough to hold the largest cymbal and soak the cymbals for a few days to a week. coke will dissolve a nail, so it'll probably corrode your cymbals pretty well. it'll take lots longer than the muriatic acid thing though.



here's another idea. you could soak them in used motor oil. then just wipe them down rather than try to clean them off.
 
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...dont come near my Paistes... just reading this makes me shudder at the thought of what it could do...
 
mmmm taffy is the food of the gods... and really fat porn stars
 
While my method of ageing cymbals has always been the tried & true method (gigging the hell out of em') I found this thread interesting.

I too have heard the bury em' method (I have a drummer friend who actually found an old cymbal in the ground - we're guessing someone buried it and forgot - or couldn't remember where it was buried).

If at the end or the day (a very abusive day) you got the cymbals to sound "better" then your methodology is valid - but stay the hell away from my cymbals :D
 
I'd say the best way to age a cymbal is to buy a used Zildjian cymbal. And as others have said, really aging is only going to make some difference, not a whole lot. You have to start with a good cymbal such as a good Zildjian, Paiste, Sabian, Ufip, Istanbul.

Generally you should only buy cymbals when you can hear them first, unless you have a lot of experience with cymbals or maybe if you're buying a new cymbal from a well-controlled manufacturing process. Especially with Wuhans, less with later-manufactured cymbals. For instance, they are selling the small Wuhan chinese crashes for ten bucks; I went through a bunch of them at a music store until I found one that didn't sound like a pan lid, that had a nice spread of overtones, and it's a very good cymbal, especially for ten bucks, but, it's a trashy little Chinese crash, not a Turkish-style ride.

If you have a music store near you that sells used cymbals, that's probably the way to go. Or, find a new model, that sounds good to you.

It's good advice to plug the ear nearest the cymbal for a bit while trying it, to get an idea of what it sounds like from across the room.

A good cymbal should sound nice and dark and have good stick definition, even just after it's been cleaned. It's like a nicely-tuned tom; it usually sounds best wide-open, with no muffling. There are always exceptions of course.
 
tilinmyowngrave said:
mmmm taffy is the food of the gods... and really fat porn stars
Click to expand...

Mmmmmmm....fat porn stars!

NO!! wait! I mean.....uh....mmmmm....taffy!
 
Not a bad deal for the money. I've actually purchased the cymbal pack from Wuhan. I currently have A. Zildjians and Wuhan splashes and chinas. For the money, these are damn good cymbals, especially my 8" Wuhan splash... very dark. Hopefully my batch of crashes coming won't be anything like trash can lids...
 
Don't any of you ever come anywhere NEAR my cymbals....thank you very much!
 
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