Meinl 22″ Soundcaster Custom Mega Bell Ride Cymbal

The bell of a cymbal is much more than just a place to suspend the cymbal from. It contributes a lot to the sound. The larger the bell, in general, the more musical it sounds. A cymbal without a bell sounds very dry. A typical cymbal has a bell that spans about 25-30% of the cymbal diameter. In this 22″ Meinl Soundcaster Custom Mega Bell Ride Cymbal, the bell makes up nearly half the diameter across the cymbal. This results in a very unique ride sound, and it also gives “Bell Riders” a huge surface to work with.

The ride sound of this cymbal is rather dark, in part because the bell is putting out a lot of sound even though one is riding the flat part of the cymbal. The wash is very musical and almost as loud as the ping. Bottom line: This is a very unusual cymbal that will get a lot of attention, and if you are a bell rider, you will think you have gone to heaven.

Specifications

  • Manufacturer Line: Sound Caster Custom
  • Type: Ride
  • Style: Heavy
  • Alloy: B20 – CuSn20 – 80% Copper, 20% Tin
  • Diameter: 22″
  • Metal Work: Hand Hammered, Hand Lathed, Brilliant Finish
  • Weight: 7 Pounds
  • MSRP: $640 USA; Street Price $350
  • Meinl

The hammering and lathing are both done by hand, and the lathing is widely spaced. The bell is not hammered or lathed, and the cymbal has a Brilliant finish. That unhammered, unlathed huge bell is like a mirror. If you click on the photo above, a larger version will pop up, and you can see me kneeling down in front of the cymbal as I was taking the picture. The dark squares on the left side of the bell are reflections of the sound absorption panels on the wall. At the top of the bell, you can see reflections of the two easy chairs where I do my music listening.

meinl-22-inch-sound-caster-custom-mega-bell-ride-photo-closeup

The spectrum has peaks at 260 Hz, 800 Hz, 1.4 kHz, and 3.7 kHz, then rises to 9 kHz before dropping sharply and remaining flat from 14 kHz to 28 kHz, then declining again, out to 50 kHz. Most of the decay occurs between 6 kHz and 50 kHz, while the frequencies below 6 kHz don’t decay very much in the 2 second sound sample period. This is further illustrated in the Level vs. Time spectrum, where there is a significant amount of signal immediately after the ping up to about 0.2 seconds, after which there is rapid decay, which represents the attenuation of the frequencies above 6 kHz.

It is the peaks at the above-mentioned frequencies that give the cymbal its “musicality” that I referred to. In other words, you can hear more individual “notes”. When the spectrum is flatter, without several high peaks, the wash will be more like white noise, which is the kind of wash we are used to with most cymbals.

meinl-22-inch-sound-caster-custom-mega-bell-ride-spectrum

meinl-22-inch-sound-caster-custom-mega-bell-ride-level-vs-time

Click HERE to listen to an audio sample, which will include crash (when appropriate), ride, and bell sounds (these are 24 bit, 176.4 kHz wav files, so be sure your sound card is capable of handling these high resolution sound files).

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