Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Making Cymbals Sound Trashy




Drummers far and wide have trashy cymbals sitting in a corner, or perhaps they are part of a rehearsal kit. Why beat the crap out of your quality cymbals during rehearsal when all you have to do is hit the mark during a song? What I find interesting is that on more than one occasion, I found that the broken cymbal starts to sound pretty good, when used in the proper context of a song.


Tyrko Cymbals by Sonor


I bought a Tyrko cymbal on Ebay a long time ago. It was pretty much junk, and I knew that I was taking a risk. The metal is all "bend-y" and it sounds like something you get when you buy your six year old nephew a toy drum set. I kept it as a reminder to never buy cymbals online.
Fast forward about ten years, and I'm practicing a song that my band wrote. This song screams for a China type cymbal, but I put a lock on my wallet when it comes to buying new equipment. Could this crappy Tyrko cymbal do the trick? Do I have the mad skills to hammer it into the shape that I want? Who doesn't love to hammer stuff?


I had nothing to lose, and not much of a plan. I thought that I would start by hammering a number of dents into the cymbal two inches from the outer edge, working in a circle. Then I would hammer another ring of dents with the cymbal flipped over, with this ring being closer to the bell. Sadly the metal is too flexible, hence the reason that it sounds like crap to begin with. Still, I managed to get a pretty ugly sound out of it, even if it has too much decay. Here is a link for all of you do it yourself home made cymbal nuts out there.

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