Zildjian A Series Cymbals

In celebrating Zildjian's 390th anniversary the company has decided to redesign twenty of its legendary A series of cymbals, including the amazing new 23” Sweet Ride, 21” Sweet Ride and 22” Medium Ride. The sound labs at Zildjian have focused on finding each particular model's sweet spot by adjusting the cymbal's curvature and shape and lowering the pitch to change the fundamental frequency, thus making it easier on the ear. The R&D team worked closely with Zildjian artists who asked for larger cymbals at lighter weights with a more focused tone that still projects well.

The 23” Sweet Ride is just a tone machine. The ride is nice and soft and full of harmonic overtones, with an epic, deep crash, and musical-sounding bell. Next, the 21” Sweet Ride is still the #1-selling ride in its class with beautiful mellow tones and a bouncy, “poppy” bell. Moving onto brighter sounds, the 20” Medium Ride features a larger hammer mark for some more colour and stick definition, with a nice, bright “chimey” tone, a sharp crash and glassy-sounding bell. Next up, the 22” Medium Ride features smoother chime, a long, dark crash with a lot of decay and a well-defined bell. Right now the big crashes seem to be popular so it's easy to ride both the 19” Thin Crash and the 19” Medium Thin Crash. Both sound very brilliant and are defined in their tone. Finally, the 20” Thin Crash and the 20” Medium Thin Crash have been brought back into production sounding full with a quick response and long tone trail, so they'll give you that perfect '70s Joey Kramer/Aerosmith sound.