Earth toning/Soil aging?

S

SOMDDrummer93

Member
So i have been looking for some ways to improve the sound of my not so good cymbals. I have Paiste 502s, a 20" ride 16" crash and 14" hats [i also have a 2002 15" wild china, but that does not need improving/tweaking]. I have been wanting to improve my cymbal setup or at least make my cymbal sound a little less bright, however money is hard to come by for me. Recently I have been researching this and came across an article on Earth toning. the link is:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Earth-toning-soil-aging-cymbals-to-get-a-darke/step6/Wait/

My question is does anyone have experience with this sort of thing? Also is this something that is potentially legit? Should i consider it? time will not be an issue as i am going to college next year and won't be able to take my set with me until my grandparents move to the area near my college sometime during my sophmore year. Comments and help please?
 
There have been threads here about this before.
It is all a pile of crap!

A cymbal ages naturally from oxidation and it develops a patina.
Most modern cymbals are clear coated and they resist oxidation.
They do change sound a slight bit over the years as the coating breaks down.

If a cymbal doesn't sound good to you when it is new, it will never sound good to you.
Aging will change it slightly but it won't make any drastic changes.
Cymbals get their sound from the bronze composition that they are made from and the steps of forming, heating, lathing, and hammering that they go through during manufacturing buy talented cymbal craftsman.
The magic is in the craftsmanship!

Save your money, select cymbals that you like, and buy them slowly over time.

I'm sorry, but burring a cymbal in earth is a waste of time.
 
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Thank you very much, I have had these 502s for about 8 years now, but was wondering what i could do to change sound, especially since i will have a year off from my set.
 
As the years go by your cymbal taste will develop.
You will discover the sounds that you like and you will slowly add cymbals to your collection.
I fell in love with Paiste 2oo2 rides back in the late 1970s.
I still have my 2oo2 20 and 22 inch rides and I love them.
I also have Zildian K Customs and Istanbul Agops.
Those are some of the cymbals that I like. I selected every one of my pies because I heard something special in them.
 
I can personally recommend another method. This was done by my drum teacher on some beautiful, pristine Bosphorus cymbals. Mix salt and lemon juice in about equal parts, and sponge it onto your cymbals. In 1-3 hours, with perhaps a second coating, they will develop a bold, earthy, lime green patina. Wipe and dry.
The change is very apparent. Visually, they are darker and green, with any existing labels getting a worn look. The sound change is fantastic. Probably more noticeable on thin cymbals. It creates a darker, lower sound. Having heard/ played the cymbals myself before, I can hear a big difference. Just to be sure, he showed me a before and after video. If he ever uploads it, I'll make it known to all. It's amazing. Have fun and try it. Make a video if you can!
 
SOMDDrummer93 said:
So i have been looking for some ways to improve the sound of my not so good cymbals. I have Paiste 502s, a 20" ride 16" crash and 14" hats [i also have a 2002 15" wild china, but that does not need improving/tweaking]. I have been wanting to improve my cymbal setup or at least make my cymbal sound a little less bright, however money is hard to come by for me. Recently I have been researching this and came across an article on Earth toning. the link is:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Earth-toning-soil-aging-cymbals-to-get-a-darke/step6/Wait/

My question is does anyone have experience with this sort of thing? Also is this something that is potentially legit? Should i consider it? time will not be an issue as i am going to college next year and won't be able to take my set with me until my grandparents move to the area near my college sometime during my sophmore year. Comments and help please?
Click to expand...

My bet is it's just the 502s. You would be better off going to professional grade cymbals. Plus, I think Paiste coats all their cymbals, which would really complicate burial or lime and salt effects. When I was a teenager, I could not afford new Zildjians (back then it was just Avedis and Kerope), so I bought used Zildjians at pawn shops. They were all greatly oxidized with mega patina, and while some sounded great, others sounded pretty crappy too. I think Bobdadruma is right - if they sound good new, they will always sound good. You cannot really equate cymbals with Chateau Latour Bordeaux wine. Aging does not make them better, at least in my opinion. That said, I do really recommend 1960s Zildjian and Paiste (602 and Giant Beat) cymbals that you can pick up on Ebay pretty cheap. They are beautiful sounding instruments. The Zs will definitely come with all that oxidation and patina if that's what floats your boat.
 
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bobdadruma said:
As the years go by your cymbal taste will develop.
You will discover the sounds that you like and you will slowly add cymbals to your collection.
I fell in love with Paiste 2oo2 rides back in the late 1970s.
I still have my 2oo2 20 and 22 inch rides and I love them.
I also have Zildian K Customs and Istanbul Agops.
Those are some of the cymbals that I like. I selected every one of my pies because I heard something special in them.
Click to expand...

Very well said. I agree 100%.
 
bobdadruma said:
There have been threads here about this before.
It is all a pile of crap!
Click to expand...

Maybe soiling the cymbal in a pile of crap is the answer!

Seriously though, I wonder if the type of soil, pH and etc. plus significant amounts of time will do the trick.

No, you're right. To find the right sounds in cymbals is truly a task that takes experience and time... I've started to realize this myself.
 
Cleaning your cymbals will lead to a rounding of the high spots of the lathing and build up in the grooves that decreases vibration and muffles the tone. Patina will also mellow and dry the tone of old cymbals but in a more tonally pleasing way. Patina on bronze is the metals natural protective coating that is an extension of the metal (not a build up). If you are looking to do it quickly, try some liver of sulphur. You'll still have to play them in for a few years but they will turn brown instantly.
 
It is a legitimate procedure. A few years ago, Mark Love, Sabian's Master Product Specialist, buried 100 cymbals, then dug them up months later.

Also, burying cymbals for "earth aging" has been a practice for a long time with hardcore jazz drummers.
 
SOMDDrummer93 said:
So i have been looking for some ways to improve the sound of my not so good cymbals. I have Paiste 502s, a 20" ride 16" crash and 14" hats [i also have a 2002 15" wild china, but that does not need improving/tweaking]. I have been wanting to improve my cymbal setup or at least make my cymbal sound a little less bright,
Click to expand...

Unfortunately you bought 'bright' cymbals. Paiste 502s. I am guessing you will want to slowly sell them off and 'upgrade' thus I would not bother altering them as you will affect their resale value. Just simply slowly patiently acquire new cymbals, maybe by selling the 502's off one at a time (if that is they are not for you).

I too was curious about cymbal aging, but impatient to bury in my back yard for 10 months or more, and not willing to experiment on my nicer cymbals.

I bought a crappy pair of used Sabian BPro hihats (b8 alloy) for $10. They did not sound good to me, so and decided to age them in 10 minutes.

I accellerated things. Given some threads and info on here:
1. I sponged them in lemon juice and vinegar, and coated with salt. Let stand for 30 minutes.
2. take coated cymbals into oven at 200 F. yes my home oven, at 200 F.
3. 10 minutes in oven, until juic emixture dried and hardnended, then let slowly cool, salt encrusted
4. washed off outside with a hose. As you can imagine, The salt and acidic mixture really attacked the surface of the cymbal.

They look really cool, if you are into that unlathed oxidized look. All kinds of wild blues and patterns. It improved the sound of these cheapo cymbals to MY ears, darker. The problem is it is NOT REPRODUCIBLE. I do not recommend this on nice cymbals, only cymbals that you have given up on improving and willing to bite the bullet and experiment. They will indeed darken the sound but at the end of the day you can only erase the effects of the alloy and manufacturing process so much by surface processes.

To me this is the beauty of experimentation.
 
Do we have any metallurgists or chemical engineers on the forum who wish to weigh-in? I'm a born skeptic and some of this has a faint whiff of BS / snake oil but who knows?

I guess really in the end, if you believe this process improves the sound, then it does improve the sound to the only person who really matters; you, the cymbal owner.
 
Hammering your cymbal would be an alternative if your goal is to change the tone. I have no idea how to do it, but I'm pretty sure you can change your cymbals tone if you know what you're doing.
 
Id rather like to think that the aging of the cymbal changes it's sound more than patina...And there's science to back it up. As the cymbal ages, the molecular structures in the alloy develop a tighter more dense bond as it gets farther from being forged...
 
Croc said:
Do we have any metallurgists or chemical engineers on the forum who wish to weigh-in?
Click to expand...

I work in metals at high temperatures, I mean the melting point beyond those of copper and tin. I do not work with copper or tin, and don;t make cymbals (but wish I did)

thickness, diameter, profile, alloy, lathing, and of course hammering - The #1 variables , in other words the main sound in your cymbal .

Patina - what you'd get from aging and or 'burying' in doggie doo, is surface oxidation. The copper in your alloy is converting to copper oxides, thus the greenish tinge of some patinas. Most are not really very green though, given less time and the tin content.

Surface oxidation only goes micrometers deep in most bronze (deeper in steel). It must affect the metals surface and thus affect its vibration, harmonics...sound. Whether it makes a big difference varies and of course whether we can hear it is another matter. Physically it has to.

By far the more important things are the #1 parameters, but there is a reason some of those jazz guys preferred aged pies.

My point above is cymbal aging, un-naturally like the backyard thing, is not going to be controllable or reproducible in any way. You get what you get.
 
Hi Louis:

Thanks for weighing-in and bringing some science to bear. What may seem like voodoo isn't always.

Several years back, we met with a perspective customer (the company I work for makes very large machine tools) who makes "frogs". these are the crossover sections of rail used by the railroads to allow two railways to cross each other. For reasons unknown, these are made from magnesium. During manufacturing, these parts are toughened / hardened by packing explosives around them then blasting, thereby compressing the material on the surface. Conventional processes such as induction hardening or carburizing do not work.

I agree with your point about the hierarchy of sonic impact and the minor effect of the oxide / patina on the surface of the cymbal. I might argue that years of vibrational stress relieving (the cymbal being struck ) would have more impact (ha!) than the surface oxide. But hey, I'm often wrong!

Croc
 
Croc said:
During manufacturing, these parts are toughened / hardened by packing explosives around them then blasting, thereby compressing the material on the surface. Conventional processes such as induction hardening or carburizing do not work.
Click to expand...

A little bit of a derail but related...I don't believe I've ever heard of anyone shot peening their cymbal. This would also compress the metal. I have to wonder what that would do to the tone
 
Uncle Larry:

Good question, I wondered the same thing. I would imagine any process that builds up a comparatively harder outer shell (like the candy coating on an M&M) compared to the core / base material would have a sonic effect and likely much more than surface patina!

Croc
 
larryace said:
A little bit of a derail but related...I don't believe I've ever heard of anyone shot peening their cymbal. This would also compress the metal. I have to wonder what that would do to the tone
Click to expand...

Then cryogenically freeze it.
 
Croc said:
Hi Louis:

For reasons unknown, these are made from magnesium. During manufacturing, these parts are toughened / hardened by packing explosives around them then blasting, thereby compressing the material on the surface.
Click to expand...


Magnesium? hmmm, I wonder why? lack of corrosion?

The shock wave would be an extreme example of 'strain hardening' of a material. When the steel or any material is shocked, the grains of the metal deform, recrystallize, usually to smaller grain sizes. Basically hammering does the same thing on a cymbal, and leads to an audible change in the character of a metal.

Whats amazing is that cymbal makers can do this, know where to hit, how to it, allover the cymbal working it into a clean sound.

But as I understand, the truly hand hammered cymbals are not reproducible, but clearly desired.
 
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