Paiste 18″ Alpha Brilliant Metal Crash Cymbal

For you metal drummers out there, Paiste makes this one in the Alpha line, which includes 17″, 18″, 19″, and 20″ sizes, all in a Brilliant finish (shined with an abrasive). There is also a 20″ Alpha Metal Ride available. Alphas are made from a B8 alloy (92% copper, 8% tin), and this can be seen in its very coppery color. It’s thick, heavy, and delivers a bright punch that will cut through any stack of guitar amplifiers. It will take a beating, for sure. In fact, when I ran the test, it overloaded my microphones, so I had to back them off a few more inches. My microphones will handle up to 130 dB!

The closeup photo shows the evenly spaced lathing that includes the bell, and the deep hammering. There is a circle of hammer spots around the edge of the bell, but the rest are irregularly placed, indicating hand hammering (it was probably done on a machine, but the machinist chose the locations rather than having a CNC type of hammering that is preset).

The frequency spectrum starts rising at about 200 Hz, peaks at 6 kHz, then declines slowly to about 55 kHz. The intensity peaks at 0.28 seconds, which is what one would expect from a heavy cymbal like this.

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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