Hand Hammered speaks with a musical darkness steeped in nearly 400 years of cymbal making history. SABIAN artisans craft our 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 capable of motivating the musician in any discerning drummer. Individually unique, Hand Hammered is the cymbal with a sound that is a piece of art.

With its high shape and large bell, the Vintage is big on volume and tone. Great for jazz, rock and beyond.

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