Sabian Hand-Hammered series cymbals are warm, imaginative, and emotional. Hand Hammered speaks with a musical darkness steeped in nearly 400 years of cymbal-making history. Sabian artisans craft their secret process bronze into soulful cymbals, rich with dark, traditional tone. It's a complex blend of sounds that comes together in a warm, musical mix.

HH CRAFTSMANSHIP

HH cymbals are traditionally hand-hammered into shape and sound by Sabian craftsmen. Each cymbal receives between 2,000 and 4,000 hammer blows, resulting in increased musicality, tonal complexity, and unmatched sonic texture.

• Sabian metallurgists combine measured amounts of copper, tin, and silver to create centuries-old recipe for Sabian B20 bronze alloy
• Molten-hot B20 bronze is very carefully hand-poured into pots, and once cooled, yields already-musical B20 bronze castings
• B20 castings are meticulously hand-separated by weight and prepared to remove all impurities
• Castings are fed through a large rolling oven up to a dozen times, involving a crew of 5 men who must work with choreographic precision under intense heat
• During the entire rolling process, blanks must be rotated carefully to create a molecular weave for strength and durability
• As castings become cymbal blanks, custom-built machine tools are expertly hand-operated to press bells into blanks, drill holes in center, cut down to size and bump for approximate shape
• Hand-hammering artisans shape and form each cymbal with 2,000 to 4,000 precision-placed hammer blows, adding musicality, complexity, and dark tone
• Lathe craftsmen operate specially retrofitted lathes, thinning cymbal to the desired gauge while adding crucial tonal grooves
• Cymbal must be trimmed to exact size and the edges buffed for smoothness
• Each individual cymbal is hand-tested and hand-weighed in the Vault by Vault sound specialists, a critical process
• Each individual cymbal is placed on a shelf to age, allowing the frantically active molecules to slow down and stabilize
• Each individual cymbal is once again hand-tested by two Vault specialists to ensure they fit the parameters of the series and model