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Zildjian Factory Tour
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Our second factory tour in two days earlier this year saw us arriving in Norwell Massachusetts. After an overnight stay and a free upgrade to Jacuzzi suites (life''s tough sometimes!), we arrived at the gates of the oldest continually-owned family company in America. What awaited us at the Zildjian factory was a fascinating insight into the history of this famous company, a first hand insight into how Zildjian cymbals are made, a tour of some amazing memorabilia and a chance to meet all the people who make it possible. |
Once upon a time... |
Fast forward 300 years to America where a young Turkish Armenian immigrant, Avedis Zildjian III, married with a son, Armand, was making a good living from his candy factory in the Boston area. Then in 1927 he received a letter from his late father''s brother Aram in Europe. Aram was getting on in years and felt it was time to pass on the family secret, so he wrote to his only living heir, Avedis in Boston asking him to come home to continue to run to family business. Not so keen on returning to Europe Avedis agreed with his uncle that he would continue with the business but only if it was in America. He brought Aram over and the family tradition continued. To this day that family tradition continues with only a very small number of people knowing the secret of how to mix the alloys to make Zildjian Cymbals.
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Pre-tour There are photos and paintings around the place of the past generations of Zildjians going back many years. There was the original letter Aram sent to Avedis III along with lots of other trinkets of information and history dotted around the place. The corridor down to the factory is lined with hundreds of photos of famous Zildjian players down the years, which really sucks you into the long history of this company and indeed the pride it takes in that history. |
Just off the end of the corridor is the Drummers Lounge. Laid out on stands all around the room is at least one of every single model of cymbal the company makes. This is serious kid in candy shop stuff. A gazillion Zildjian cymbals, a drum kit and a bar............ need one say more? Many of the best drummers in the world have passed through this room, coming in to pick out a new set of cymbals, or just trying out a new range. It looked like a really cool place to just hang. But it gets better (if that''s possible) as you walk into the room, to your left, on a riser is one of Buddy''s kits, with original skins, flanked by his cases, set-up in the classic Buddy configuration. There was plenty of room to sit behind the kit, which of course we did - you know, just to say you were there! On the opposite wall was one of the first cymbals made in the US in the 1920''s accompanied by one from c1910 - which needless to say looked great. |
The factory floor |
We then took a walk around the to the Melt room. This is the place where the actual molten metals are mixed. There are only a handful of guys who are authorised to work there. They sign-off lifetime agreements to keep the recipe and techniques secret. Behind the closed doors is a giant crucible which is where they break up the copper and the tin and they mix it together into a molten liquid state before pouring it into casting bowls. They allow the alloy to cool and to settle and then they dump out the castings sorting them by weight and size. The larger the cymbal, the larger the casting. For a 24" ride cymbal they might have a casting that''s at least 1½" thick which means that it will have to go through the oven a number of times in order to be heated and then it will have to go through the rolling mills at least eight times. We stood outside the Melt room by a container full of castings waiting to be heated and rolled. These were no more than cooled blobs of metal but when struck, even in this state gave out a clear ring like you would never expect. |
Moving on, we took a walk around to the Rotary Hearth. This is a custom-made oven system which operates at a temperature of above 1400ºF. This oven replaced the old box ovens that the company used to use of which there were about three or four. There was a lot of manual labour involved with loading and unloading of the cymbals using these old ovens. Apparently they had a system called first in last out where if you were trying to make a bigger cymbal for example, the thicker blanks would have to spend more time in the oven, ultimately, so it would get loaded into the rear portion of the oven and the thinner cymbals would go right upfront - similar to a brick pizza oven. |
The advent of the rotary hearth, which is basically a carousel, changed all that. It''s a platform on runners allowing it to run within the oven so it revolves allowing all the blanks to receive an even amount of heat. It''s also quite large and can hold literally hundreds of blanks at a time allowing them to stagger production where they can have splashes, hi-hats, rides, all taking a trip at once around the oven getting heated. It''s then a repetitive process of heating and rolling. Right next to the Rotary Hearth were the rolling mills. After each trip around the oven, the blanks are taken out and put through these rolling mills which flatten them out until they get to the right surface area, size and thinness. They roll out each blank as much as they can until it starts to break up on the edges. This was all a very "industrial" process. Lots of noise, heavy machinery and big guys pulling these hot blanks out running them through the rollers before shovelling them back into the oven for another trip. We could actually see into the oven at one point and it was packed with blanks in various states of completion being cooked. |
From there they temper each blank which involves a quick dip into a saline solution. Tempering allows the craftsmen to work the cymbal without it breaking, much like the art of sword making. The tempering process is really key to getting the blank to a stage where it''s flexible and malleable enough to enable the metal to be hammered without it cracking. So the tempering takes place, the centre hole is punched out and the cup in pressed into shape. It was at this point we started seeing something that looked more like a cymbal. At some point in the distant past, you may have seen a bunch of guys sitting in a semi circle hand hammering cymbals passing each cymbal on to the next guy to do the other side. Not these days. There''s no hand hammering done at Zildjian. All hammering is done by machine and the official company take on this is that it''s a ‘better mouse trap’ means to an end. Back in the “old country” when they didn''t have any machinery to shape the cymbals they had to do it by hand because that was the best they had - that was state of the art. With the advent of computer design software that controls the hammering devices themselves, they can design a cymbal in as imaginative a way as they can think of. They can randomise the hammer patterns or dial in the exact amount of pressure per hammer strike for example. It''s really down to a science now so hand hammering at Zildjian is really a thing of the past. Armand played a big role in the use of technology to help the workers and to make it a more efficient process. It''s all done now in one step and it''s really to help ensure a better quality cymbal and to keep up with the demand in the market. In the case of K Custom, they are hammered lathed and then hammered again which is called over hammering. With the A and A Custom series the hammering is very symmetrical and even. With K Zildjian''s the hammering is more random, there''s a lot more overtones going on with that range which lends itself to a more complexity of sound. The K Constantinople is one of their most hammered cymbals. |
Next we were taken over to the lathing areas. Basically there are two purposes to lathing. Firstly to shave the cymbal down to its specified weight and secondly to cut in the tonal grooves. Every cymbal model has a weight range that it''s supposed to fit within so that even though it''s the same model it still has its own personality due to these slight variations in weight and pitch within the range. Not all cymbals have tonal grooves, indeed not all cymbals are lathed for that matter, but certainly in the case of the A Zildjian, A Custom and K Custom ranges, for the most part, lathing takes place. Now this was quite a cool part of the tour as you could see the cymbal take on its brilliant shine at it was being lathed. There were about six or seven upright lathing machines. Each operative would grab a cymbal which had come over from the previous stage, put it on the lathe which spins very fast and the lathe basically takes a cut on one side. The process is repeated for each side. The underside of the cup is done by hand while the cymbal is still spinning within the lathe. The guys made it look very easy but needless to say they weren''t born working these machines and have worked under an apprenticeship for quite some time to get it right. From there we took a quick look at the buffing area. Select models of cast and sheet metal cymbals are buffed here one by one to bring out their brilliant finishes. |
From the noisy environment of the factory floor we walked into the serenity of the testing room. At first glance that’s exactly what it was, just an unassuming room with a pile of cymbals waiting to be tested. However, if the walls in this testing room could tell a story they would certainly be on to a bestseller, for this is the room of one Leon Chiappini. Leon has been the main tester and head of QA for Zildjian for the past 42 years! EVERY cymbal made by Zildjian passes through this room and only when it passes Leon’s, or one of his understudies’ ears can the Zildjian logo be stamped on the cymbal. That’s right, every cymbal is hand tested before it is released. In one corner of the room there’s a large rack which is the reference cymbals for each particular model. When a batch comes in, the testers give the reference cymbal a whack to get the baseline for that batch. It was only since Zildjian went into 24 hour production a few years ago that the company decided to run an apprentice scheme to train other people to carry on the tradition of this human quality assurance. The walls were lined with photos of Leon with some of the most famous drummers of all time and you really felt the sense of tradition and history from this one simple room. |
From there we went into the printing and etching room. The logo is stamped onto the cymbal using the common silk screening method. There were literally piles of cymbals waiting to be printed here so I suppose it was just as well the company works 24/7. With the advent of laser technology Zildjian has been able to trademark their cymbals using a laser etching device rather than the old fashioned stamp. This method allows for greater consistency and doesn''t create any weak spots, dents or fracture points in the cymbal and allows clear continuous identification. Zildjian always puts a kind of serial number, or lot number at the very bottom of each trademark. Look at your Zildjians and you''ll notice a number series that allows them to trace back the cymbal to when it was made, what oven it came out of etc. Finally, we went into the famous vault. The Drummers Lounge had nothing on this place. There were literally thousands of cymbals stacked up to the roof waiting for dispatch. Big ones, small ones, shiny ones, trashy ones, splashy ones………… |
So that was it. The tour had ended and we were back around where we started from. The thing that struck us most was the size of the factory. It was much smaller than you would have imagined, given the turnover of cymbals every year. Although they now run a 24 hour production line. The other main thing was the tangent sense of history. The place is very well laid out for visitors with samples, photos and memorabilia all around and certainly our guide, Jim, knew his stuff. We were definitely part of the privileged few who has toured the Zildjian factory and it was certainly an experience we’re not likely to forget for a long time! You can find more information about the history of the company from the book “Zildjian – A History of the Legendary Cymbal Makers” by Jon Cohan ISBN 0793591546. For more information about Zildjian Cymbals visit www.Zildjian.com. To see on on-line factory tour go to www.zildjian.com/en-US/about/factory_tour.ad2 Thanks to Jim, John Craigie and Debbie for a very memorable day. |
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