Paiste 22″ 2002 Power Ride Cymbal

I have been a big fan of the Paiste 2002 series for a long time. I only had 2002 crash cymbals though. When I read about a drummer’s experience with the 2002 ride cymbal on a drum forum, I decided to obtain one and see (hear) if I liked it as well as he did. I did.

The 2002’s are a B8 alloy, meaning that they are 8% tin and 92% copper. The version I had for review was the Power Ride, which is very heavy at 3550 grams, almost 8 pounds. In the close-up photo below you can see that it is heavily hammered and lathed (the bell is lathed but not hammered). The ride sound delivers a distinct, but long lasting, ping (the main body of the ping lasts a long time, relatively), compared to a ride cymbal that has a very tight short ping, like a flat ride for example. This cymbal would work beautifully in any rock situation and big band. It has a bit too much ping for small jazz group (quintet). The bell is very musical.

All in all, a terrific cymbal. In fact, an executive from one of the other cymbal manufacturers who was visiting my lab told me he thought it was a beautiful ride cymbal. That says a lot.

The spectrum does not have very much low frequency information (below 100 Hz), but has strong peaks at 320 Hz, 440 Hz, and 850 Hz, which give the cymbal its tonality. The rising series of peaks from about 2 kHz up to 10 kHz are the body of the sound. It then drops off quickly and has some significant – but much lower energy – between 10 kHz and 65 kHz.

The ping declines slowly for a ride cymbal, i.e., there is still substantial energy at 0.1 seconds.

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).

If your sound card cannot play the high resolution file, click HERE to listen to an MP3 sound file.

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