Zildjian 18″ A Medium Thin Crash Cymbal

The Zildjian A Medium Thin Crash Cymbal (part of their Avedis Zildjian line) might be called a “bread and butter cymbal”. If you are going to have just two crashes in your kit, and you play either jazz or big band, this cymbal would be there. Buddy Rich used one of these in his set of three (one ride, two crashes). That says just about everything that could be said. It’s bright, fast, and neutral.

It’s great as a crash, and I own one of these which I use when I am playing jazz. As to using it as a ride, I don’t think so, but it does have a distinguished “ping”. Maybe in a laid back jazz number it would work during a tenor sax solo. The bell, on the other hand, is crisp, with a nice tone that gets through, but doesn’t cut.

The close-up photo illustrates that the entire cymbal is hammered and lathed. The lathing is deep, with medium spacing. The hammering is also deep, and very close together.

The spectrum is reasonably flat, which is what I would expect from a “neutral” sound. It extends out to 70 kHz, one of the few cymbals we have tested that have frequencies out that far.

The crash peaks at 0.15 seconds, and the decay is moderate.

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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