Paiste 2002, B8 but why do they sound so good?

I am just glad to see that 2002 crashes also won the hearts of other people like they did to me :).

I got onto 2002 crashes back in 2003, was at a music store which stocked 99% Sabian, and I was just going up and down each column hitting each crash to find one I liked. Hit one, went ... "THAT'S IT!!" Hit it again, looked at the label. Paiste 2002 16" crash. Couldn't believe it :).

I've pretty much been a Paiste man since that day, I've owned 16", 18" and 19" 2002 crashes, Signature and Giant Beat crashes, but the 2002 series will always hold a special place in my heart now that I've moved on in how I want to sound :).
 
I think that it's all about the type of Copper they use.
B8 broze consists (mainly) on 92% Copper ad 8% Tin, BUT Copper in it's natural state comes with Silver. A very famous-worldwide known drummer told me that he moved from a big brand to another when he started to break cymbals as a mad. He met a metal speciallist that told him that the brand he was using didn't have silver anymore on their cymbals. They take it out. So, my theory is that Paiste's 2002 alloy is not just Copper and Tin, but also Silver.

Zildjian admits to traces of silver beind ADDED to their B-20 cast cymbals.Copper and silver are both in group 11 on the pereodic table,but are different metals,and are no found in alloy form.An alloy is what yo get by combining one or more matals.

Silver is a precious metal,and if there was any of it in copper,it would be smelted out.

Cymbal makers are very tight lipped and deliberate about their alloy formulas,so taking a chance on just how much silver was in the copper they use(if they use it) is just WAY too much happenstance.

Pure copper is just that,pure copper .

I think your drummer friend,who ever he is,is mistaken.

Steve B
 
They all use traces of silver because it helps to harden the cymbals.

Too much and they will lose their musicality.
 
The 2002 16" crash has always been my favorite. I just happen to see too many cracked Paistes. I would really like some Paiste cymbals, but I can't afford tho get the ones I really like.

I did, however, manage to get my hands on a 20" Zildjian Amir crash which is from the early 80's. The Amirs are also B8 alloy and it is the best sounding crash in my collection, which includes a 19" AAXplosion and a 16" AAX dark crash. From what I heard, the first Amir line (which was replaced by the lesser quality Amir II line, then Scimitar after that), was originally developed to compete with the Paiste 2002 line of cymbals which were I guess developed to compete with the Zildjian A line (?). I don't know, but if you can get you hands on an early AMIR (with capital letters), then go for it. That is, if you like the 2002's sound.
 
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They all use traces of silver because it helps to harden the cymbals.

Too much and they will lose their musicality.

I'm a geologist, and metallurgist, and none of this is correct for a variety of reasons.
In fact silver is softer than copper anyway.

There is likely varying purity of all alloys. In other words, all metals, in cymbals, bumpers,,,,,even the gold ring you propose to your wife with, can have 'traces of silver'.
 
2002, to my ears, have a sweetly piercing timbre to their initial attack that cuts and then a smooth and even decay that has just enough meat emitting from the bell character of the cymbal which is well mixed with the wash. I'm talking the crash weight saucers here.

On top of that, when you hit them they feel great....a bit firmer than a K but more " cushiony" and crisp feeling than most other similar weight units.

Once I got my first 2002, I stopped buying any other type of cymbal except K....the 2002 is the sound in my head.
 
In that case, I stand corrected. I haven't done any reading on cymbals in years so it's quite likely I got my facts mixed up :)
 
My feeling is that when a cymbal company says 'traces' of silver it's all a bunch of hype. "Ooooh, there's precious metal in my cymbal....must be valuable!"

As a jeweller and metals kinda guy I have alloyed all sorts of precious and non-precious metals and I'll tell ya, 'traces' means nothing, especially in something the size of a cymbal. Silver and gold can only be marketed as 'pure' at 99.99% because it is almost impossible to make it 100%...to take out that .01%, or 'trace' of other metal. This doesn't change the fact that for all intents and purposes that it is 'pure'.

So let's say that there is between .01 to .1% of silver in a cymbal. This amount would have absolutely no impact on the molecular structure of the cymbal because, according to the literature I have, that amount cannot saturate throughout the copper/tin matrix. There simply are not enough atoms available to impact or influence change in the alloy's structure.
 
Paiste 2002 cymbals are sweet! They're definitely on the louder side though. If they ever make thinner models in that line, I'll be picking some up.

The Alex VanHalen ride is amazing.

I'd love a 2002 flat ride too!
 
My feeling is that when a cymbal company says 'traces' of silver it's all a bunch of hype. "Ooooh, there's precious metal in my cymbal....must be valuable!"

As a jeweller and metals kinda guy I have alloyed all sorts of precious and non-precious metals and I'll tell ya, 'traces' means nothing, especially in something the size of a cymbal. Silver and gold can only be marketed as 'pure' at 99.99% because it is almost impossible to make it 100%...to take out that .01%, or 'trace' of other metal. This doesn't change the fact that for all intents and purposes that it is 'pure'.

So let's say that there is between .01 to .1% of silver in a cymbal. This amount would have absolutely no impact on the molecular structure of the cymbal because, according to the literature I have, that amount cannot saturate throughout the copper/tin matrix. There simply are not enough atoms available to impact or influence change in the alloy's structure.

Uh .01% of silver could be a huge difference. Steel can have carbon content ranging from .002 to 2.1%. So that .01% does matter.
 
When will this ridiculous stigma surrounding B8 ever end?

It predominantly comes down to manufacturing. Cheap cymbals are cheap because they're made to be so.....not because they're made out of B8. Professional Paiste B8 cymbals sound good because they have invested the time and effort into crafting quality cymbals out of B8, whereas the others have left that alloy for their cheaper lines and put all their efforts into B20. There's so much more to cymbal manufacturing than just selecting an alloy. There is tempering, hammering, lathing et al, that contributes to the overall sound as much as the alloy alone does. Spend less time achieving desirable results during this process and you'll keep the cost down, but the end result will also be reflected in the overall sound quality of the cymbal.

It's not the alloy itself.....it never has been. It's the time, effort and money spent during the manufacturing process to begin with.
 
Uh .01% of silver could be a huge difference. Steel can have carbon content ranging from .002 to 2.1%. So that .01% does matter.

I respectfully disagree. I'm no expert when it comes to ferrous metals but I do know that they behave in a distinctly different way than non-ferrous metals. They cannot be compared in most instances and have different aspects to their atomic structure and make-up. It has to do with how the metal bonds to itself on a molecular level and what the alloy ingredient does to that bond. Carbon, for example, makes that bond more rigid in iron/steel.

Copper and silver have a wonderfully homogenous bond. That is they are very complimentary to one another when alloyed. The amount of copper in a silver matrix certainly changes the characteristics of the metal alloy, i.e. its tensile strength and rigidty but not even remotely close to the extent that adding, say, phosphorous to copper has.

The interesting thing to me, and pertains greatly to this discussion, about a silver/copper alloy is how the phase diagram looks. If you go from % silver to % copper on the bottom of the graph you will see that tensile strength greatly increases with the addition of copper but maximises at about 70/30 silver to copper then drops gradually off to almost nothing at 10/90 silver to copper. This follows that even 10% silver will have little effect on properties of a copper/silver alloy, and the alloy will behave much as pure copper would.

Now, with the addition of tin we see some interesting things. That is we see an increase in tensile strength and rigidity due to the creation of Cu3Sn which is a very brittle structure. This begins to happen at about 6% tin.

I guess my point with all of this is to say that silver, at a small percentage, would not affect the properties of the the bronze alloy. It's hype.
 
Has someone of you ever tried 2002 paperthins? In which music styles have you used them? According to what a friend has told me they offer a nice range of possibilities, if you hit them using a light touch you can get a warm/dark-ish sound, on the other hand if you hit them hard you can get a bright and cutting suond...
 
When will this ridiculous stigma surrounding B8 ever end?

It predominantly comes down to manufacturing. Cheap cymbals are cheap because they're made to be so.....not because they're made out of B8. Professional Paiste B8 cymbals sound good because they have invested the time and effort into crafting quality cymbals out of B8, whereas the others have left that alloy for their cheaper lines and put all their efforts into B20. There's so much more to cymbal manufacturing than just selecting an alloy. There is tempering, hammering, lathing et al, that contributes to the overall sound as much as the alloy alone does. Spend less time achieving desirable results during this process and you'll keep the cost down, but the end result will also be reflected in the overall sound quality of the cymbal.

It's not the alloy itself.....it never has been. It's the time, effort and money spent during the manufacturing process to begin with.
Perfectly stated and right on the money... You couldn't have said it better.
 
A very famous-worldwide known drummer told me that he moved from a big brand to another when he started to break cymbals as a mad. He met a metal speciallist that told him that the brand he was using didn't have silver anymore on their cymbals. They take it out. So, my theory is that Paiste's 2002 alloy is not just Copper and Tin, but also Silver.

...the price of commodities - including precious metals such as bronze and silver - has gone up by many multitudes since the early 2000s, and, yet, the price of the top end cymbals produced by the leading makers has risen by perhaps a single multitude...has anyone noticed a difference in sound between the cymbals produced in the 80/90s and the mid-later 2000s?...
 
...the price of commodities - including precious metals such as bronze and silver - has gone up by many multitudes since the early 2000s, and, yet, the price of the top end cymbals produced by the leading makers has risen by perhaps a single multitude...has anyone noticed a difference in sound between the cymbals produced in the 80/90s and the mid-later 2000s?...

Only with Zildjian, but that's not related to the silver content...
 
Regarding silver, you do get the Cu3Sn, but you also get Sn3Ag which has a different solidification point. And that stretches out the plastic or "pasty" transition at solidification. In fact you get more tin/silver alloying than copper/silver. These ternary phase diagrams are all over because lead free solder uses a combination of tin, silver and copper although in much different proportions.

In the casting of cymbals, the cooling and solidification is as much the magic as the alloy itself, if not more so. These are the "family secrets" handed down through the generations.

Stamping cymbals out of sheet material is an entirely different thing. Even if you lathe and hammer them later, you have a different metallurgical structure.
 
This sheet versus cast thing kind of confuses me because whenever i see a video of how cast cymbals are made, they have a cast lump of whatever secret alloy they like that is about the size of a small pie. Then they put them through rolling mills to get the general thickness they need to make whatever specific cymbal they are making.
That's pretty much how sheet metal is made, too, which is what is confusing. If they start with a round piece they cast and rolled themselves or a square sheet that came from a rolling mill, what is the difference? Especially if they both get hammered, tempered, lathed etc after? Those subsequent processes must change the grain and work harden the material. Is the casting only to get their 'secret' alloy mixture?
There aren't a lot of secrets in metallurgy and it would seem that sending a chunk of a cymbal to a lab could yield the make up of these secret alloys and the process necessary to get there. Anyone have any insights into this? Just curious really. Because it seems to be a point that some people hold up as an indicator of quality.
 
This sheet versus cast thing kind of confuses me because whenever i see a video of how cast cymbals are made, they have a cast lump of whatever secret alloy they like that is about the size of a small pie. Then they put them through rolling mills to get the general thickness they need to make whatever specific cymbal they are making.
That's pretty much how sheet metal is made, too, which is what is confusing. If they start with a round piece they cast and rolled themselves or a square sheet that came from a rolling mill, what is the difference? Especially if they both get hammered, tempered, lathed etc after? Those subsequent processes must change the grain and work harden the material. Is the casting only to get their 'secret' alloy mixture?
There aren't a lot of secrets in metallurgy and it would seem that sending a chunk of a cymbal to a lab could yield the make up of these secret alloys and the process necessary to get there. Anyone have any insights into this? Just curious really. Because it seems to be a point that some people hold up as an indicator of quality.

I think you have a very valid theory.

I might guess that Paiste starts with consistent weight discs to continue uniformity thruout the process and Zildj presses the bell into an oblong disc which was weighed before rolling to achieve uniqueness.

I know that UFIPs are cast into shape in a mold and then hammered, so it might just be the combination processes unique to each manufacturer which makes them sound good, not the metal as much. Maybe the lower tin cymbals in the other brands are also made with less steps to make them sound crappier on purpose.
 
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