In my drumming years I cracked a few (but not a lot) of cymbals and in my experience you can play quite a while with them and “fix” them with holes cut outs etc. Before they really can be considered lost. Volume loss, rattles and pitch changes yes, but i am still playing some of those decades later.

But here’s the thing. I bought an Istanbul sultan 15” crash about 25+ years ago when I was young - I loved it. But then I cracked it after a couple of years and all the character was instantly gone. A shame, but I kept it around. Taped as practice cymbal, or just in a cupboard. Today I decided on a last ditch - nothing to lose attempt to make it into an effect crash. Drilled a hole around the crack (it was a weird cross crack in the middle of the cymbal) and 3 more for good measure. Cleaned all of the gunk of it… unfortunately… still rather little. Yes it is now a more focussed trashy thing than it was with crack and probably useable 
/stackable but I was just hoping for some more character to come back.

I remember it being not the cheapest and rather miffed why I can’t salvage it. Now I just want to learn more about cymbals to explain me why. Anybody has thoughts  (or ideas?)


A new one for comparison https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XEWZbmsxZsI&pp=ygUYSXN0YW5idWwgc3VsdGFuIDE1IGNyYXNo&ra=m





Cracked Istanbul loosing all character after crack