Sabian 18″ HH Hand Hammered Medium Thin Crash Cymbal

Sabian’s HH series represents vintage sound, meaning dark, with lots of deep undertones. Cymbals in general – except those from Turkey – are machine hammered these days for a number of reasons. One is that the demand for cymbals is high enough that hand hammering every cymbal would just not produce enough product, unless the factory had 100 cymbal smiths hammering away every day. Secondly, machine hammering produces consistency in the sound for any particular model, so if a drummer breaks a cymbal, he can be reasonably sure that the replacement will sound pretty close to the one he broke. Nonetheless, there is a demand for hand hammered cymbals, because the cymbal smith can fine tune the sound and make it unique, and essentially, one of a kind. This review covers the 18″ HH Hand Hammered Medium Thin Crash.

The close-up photo shows that the cymbal is deeply lathed across the entire cymbal, including the bell. It appears to be hand lathed rather than CNC lathed. Hammering is deep, but in small diameter strokes. The sound has an obvious dark character, but some bright tones come through as well. It has a very musical ride on the main body as well as on the bell. However, the ping on the main body is about the same loudness as the wash, likely due to the cymbal being medium thin in weight, so there are better choices for ride use when you want the ping to bite.

The main peaks are at 340 Hz, 425 Hz, several between 1 kHz and 3 kHz, 3.1 kHz, and 3.5 kHz, with a decline to 50 kHz. The prominence of the peaks in the 300 Hz – 400 Hz range give this cymbal its dark character.

The peak of the crash occurs at 0.15 seconds with a moderate decay speed.

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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