Brass
Some of the finest traditional gongs and china-type cymbals, and nearly all zills, are made from brass.
However, most brass cymbals are toy or beginners' cymbals.
Many of the "show" cymbals provided by some drum kit manufacturers for use in shop window displays are also made from brass. These are typically very poor in tone, some even being simple disks of untreated metal and unplayable despite the reputable brand name they may bear.
The normal brass for cymbals is about 38% zinc in copper, which is very easily worked, readily available as sheet metal, and is easily the cheapest metal stock normally used for cymbals.
The tone of brass cymbals tends to be warm but dull compared to any sort of tin bronze, and very few drummers exploit it.
Examples of brass cymbals include: Harpy B, Meinl Marathon M38, Meinl Meteor, Meinl HCS, Orion Twister, Paiste 101, Paiste 302 and some Exotic Percussion, Pearl, Royal, Twister Series by Orion, Solar and Sbr by Sabian, Planet Z by Zildjian, nearly all zils of all makes.
Read more about this topic: Cymbal Alloys
Famous quotes containing the word brass:
“Thee for my recitative,
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day
declining,
Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat
convulsive,
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Uncle Ben’s brass bullet-mould
And powder horn, and Major Bogan’s face
Above the fire, in the half-light, plainly said
There’s naught to kill but the animated dead;”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“No stout
Lesson showed how to chat with death. We brought
No brass fortissimo, among our talents,
To holler down the lions in this air.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)