Cymbal day!

I visited Cymbal & Gong HQ yesterday and played a lot of great cymbals— they just received a big shipment. This outing I was attracted to the thinner, more characterful cymbals. There were many good options for beautiful, clean toned jazz cymbals, with slightly more straightforward character, which would have been easy choices.

I selected:

2x – 18″ Holy Grail crashes
1x – 18″ Turk crash
1x – 20″ Turk jazz ride
2x – 20″ Extra Special Janavar – jazz ride
1x – 20″ Special Janavar crash-ride
1x – 22″ Holy Grail (K-style) jazz ride
2x – 22″ Extra Special Janavar crash-ride
1x – 22″ Special Janavar crash-ride

Note: the jazz rides and crash-rides are very similar in weight and handling. It’s a kind of a C&G convention that all the Janavars are labeled crash-rides. Virtually all C&G cymbals ride and crash very well.

I’ll have the cymbals in hand at the end of the week, and will have videos and descriptions of individual cymbals posted here next week.


About the cymbals:

Extra Special Janavar: Tim Ennis of C&G and I both are very excited about this series— Janavars with irregular K-type hammering and lathing. I’m happy that this custom design was my idea. He received several each of 20s and 22s. All of the ones I sell will get a heavy patina, and the 22s will get a row of three rivets.

The regular Janavar series are excellent light weight, brighter timbred cymbals for rock/pop— with a very pure, musical, bright cymbal tone. I have Tim give them a heavy patina to make them Special Janavars. The patina seems to give them a funkier character, and makes them more appealing to me as a jazz drummer. They were a big hit in Germany last year, and continue to be very popular. They’re really cool, a brighter jazz sound with character.

I chose the lightest and most unusual ones for how they would handle the patina, there were also some great options available for anyone who wants a bright, clean, musical light-medium crash-ride— contact us to get one.

Holy Grail (K-style): I’ve had fewer of these in stock lately— they seem to be selling slowly. Possibly the “regular” Holy Grail seems mundane now, just from the familiarity of the name? If so, that’s a bad perception! People are missing out on some great cymbals for no good reason. They’re such great instruments, and would serve well as the core cymbal in any jazz drummer’s main axe. I played several really nice 22s today, and was sorry I could only get one.

For awhile the foundry was making the Holy Grail crashes a little on the stout side— a lot of them were functioning better as rides than as very responsive crashes. The current round are generally responding better in a crash role, while still riding well. I selected the ones that functioned best both ways. There are a few available that were better as pure crashes, with a more straightforward crash sound, if anyone is looking for that.

Turks: He received several each of 18, 20, and 22″, all it jazz weight. Usually they make them with no lathing, and with a hammered bell. This time they made them their usual way, which is similar to Bosphorus Turks, with a few mm wide band of lathing at the edge, and no hammering on the bell. That gives the tone a little more shimmer, where the non-lathed versions I prefer are a little darker and drier. Still, the ones I chose are excellent.

These will be listed on the site with videos and descriptions of individual cymbals next week. In the mean time, you can listen to examples of all these types of cymbals on the Get Cymbals page and the Cymbals Sold page.

Mersey Beat set

Here is the third complete set of Cymbal & Gong’s Mersey Beat series cymbals I’ve sold in about the last year. I assembled this set for Ira in Florida, who wanted them to be as Ringo-like as possible, with a definitely rideable 18. There were several MBs in the current batch that were darker or more exotic than usual; I chose the brightest cleanest ones, that also had nice pitch intervals between them.

From left to right these cymbals are:
14″ Hihats – 744/892 grams
18″ Crash-Ride – 1411 grams
20″ Crash-Ride with four rivets – 2209 grams (rivets not installed in the video)

The sticks here are Regal Tip 7As with a nylon tip— I wanted to avoid marking the cymbals. The slight orange hue is just the lighting; they’re regular B20 cymbals, that are pale bronze in color.

A quick visit to Cymbal & Gong – four 22s

I made a quick visit to Cymbal & Gong HQ today, briefly getting sounds from four excellent 22″ rides for one of my friends in Berlin.
1. Kervan (R) ~2250 grams / Janavar (L) ~2550 grams
2. American Artist (R) ~2350 grams / (L) ~2450 grams
He was seeking a 22″ Special Janavar similar to “Vivian”, which has been reserved by another drummer in Germany– but this one is about 300 grams heavier, and performs more like a light-medium ride. It’s a very cool cymbal, but probably wouldn’t respond well to the heavy patina. With rivets it might sound more like a Billy Higgins-type cymbal.

The 22″ American Artist cymbals are assertive jazz rides, very much like my own main 22″ cymbal. My cymbal seems rather aggressive in the practice room, but played live it’s just a nice, present sound.

Six 16″ Holy Grail thin / med. thin crashes

A customer requested a 16″ Holy Grail Crash, and I went over to Cymbal & Gong HQ in southeast Portland and played a few. Weights are from 941-958 grams, and all were excellent, responsive for crashing, but good for light, jazz-style riding as well. I purchased the 949 gram cymbal for sale on this site— that video and description will be coming soon. The others will be at C&G HQ until someone buys them— if you like one, send me a note, and I can find out if it is still available.

 

Over at our CRUISE SHIP DRUMMER! site, a user noticed that the last cymbal, @942 grams, sounded like Art Taylor’s cymbal from the beginning of Played Twice, from Thelonious Monk’s album 5 by 5. I think you might find some of the others are pretty close, too.

Cymbal day: 10/4/19

Video from yesterday’s visit to Cymbal & Gong HQ. I got some fantastic cymbals I’ll be adding to the site soon: Holy Grail 22″ (1) and 20″ (2) rides, and 17″ (2) and 18″ (1) crashes. If you hear anything you like, let me know ASAP— the ones I didn’t get will be going out to other dealers soon.

The rides I got were in the range of light-medium jazz rides, some with the rounded K-type bell, some with the higher, squarish 50s A-type bell, all with a warm, clean, full jazz sound with good stick definition.  All are fully usable as main ride cymbals. The crashes are all thins, with excellent crash response, and a slight funky edge.

0:00 –  Leon Collection 20″ Thin Flat Ride
Very glassy but complex, delicate sounding cymbal.
0:28 – American Artist 17″ Medium Flat Ride
This looked like an 18″, but Tim said it was 17″. Very similar sound and feel to my old Paiste 602 18″ Medium Flat Ride.
1:25 – Prototype: 20″ Swish/China Type 
I may have the size wrong— these two swishes may be 22s.
1:53 – Project cymbal: 20″ “Dizzy Gillespie” Swish with cutout, drilled for 17 rivets
Very interesting “Swish Knocker” type cymbal, primarily intended as a ride. Sound improved as we added more rivets. The last time it is played here there may have been 10 rivets inserted.
3:19 – playing flat rides again
3:35 – Dizzy cymbal with more rivets added
4:00 – 20″ Holy Grail Ride
All of the Holy Grails played here sounded great.
4:11 – another 20″ Holy Grail Ride
4:20 – another 20″ Holy Grail Ride
5:15 – 22″ Holy Grail Ride
5:40 – another 22″ Holy Grail Ride
5:53 – another 22″ Holy Grail Ride
6:10 – another 22″ Holy Grail Ride
7:30 – 17″ Holy Grail Crash
7:47 – two more 17″ Holy Grail Crashes
8:10 – 18″ Holy Grail Crash
8:20 – another 18″ Holy Grail Crash