Istanbul Agop Traditional Pap.Thin Crash 17"

16" cymbals are slightly wimpy, and 18" cymbals are just a bit on the bombastic side. But 17" cymbals are Just Right!

I have all three cymbal sizes Thomann sells from this series, and the 17" is a perfect main crash. The 18" is a perfect slightly beefier second crash. And the 16" is a perfect slightly faster accent crash. Add a suitable ride, and you have a fine cymbal setup indeed!

(You'll have to try a few of each to find cymbals that work well together of course, but that's just how cymbals are, it's not particular to these.)

Agops are in general comparable to the top lines from Zildjian/Paiste/Meinl in quality, but sell a bit cheaper. Not because they are more cheaply made, but because the global financial system is unfair. The Turkish cymbal smith who signs his work under the bell simply gets less paid for his skilled labor than he should.

It's not fair, but it is what it is... I get a great deal on some of the world's finest cymbals, so I can't really complain.

These cymbals are among my favorites. I own a lot of cymbals with special interesting character (dark/dry/trashy/weird/ugly in a cool way), but these are just regular old cymbals that sound like cymbals did before people started asking for more tonal variety. Bog standard cymbal sound, of the highest quality. And that's actually the most useful cymbal sound in the end!

There is one caveat with this line of course: They are Paper Thin, just as advertised. You have to hold back your strength and play them gently.

I honestly think most drummers would be better served by getting the Thin version instead, but if you're up for the challenge of learning to hit your crashes with a lighter touch, you get richly rewarded!

The lower sound volume of Paper Thin cymbals is a real boon: You save your ears, your bandmates are happier, and recording engineers will love you for the reduced cymbal bleed they get in the tom mics.

The attack is medium fast on these, which is fine with me. They do decay slightly slower than I like though, so I dampen them just a tiny bit to make them leave room a little faster.

To do this, I find the sweet spot to hit and dampen the top with a finger to find the sweet spot to dampen, where it does the most good and the least damage. Then I put a piece of gaffer tape in that position on the underside. Just a 5x50 mm piece of tape (mounted radially) does the trick for me. It doesn't affect the sound noticably, it just makes it go away a little faster.

With this subtle modification I'm 100 % pleased with these cymbals. They're worth their quite flimsy weight in gold!

Now how do you persuade Thomann to also start selling the 15" and 19" versions?

After using the 15" version since September 2013, I decided to go for the next "Odd size" as this complements more normal crashes in even sizes. These cymbals really do sound PAPER THIN and jazzy with absolutely LOADS of wash ! They are just absolutely unique. The finish is of outstandingly high quality and faultless. They have wide lathing with deep ridges for such thin metal, which probably adds all the jazziness and wash. I'm liking them even more than I did last year. They also have a particularly pleasing "Full Steam" choke sound.

Bin ein großer Fan der Istanbul Becken, da man dort Becken auf Zildjian-Niveau zum Underdog-Preis bekommt.
Dieses Becken ist vom Sound her Geschmackssache. Es geht unheimlich schnell aufgrund der dünnen Bauform und klingt für ein 17'er recht tief. Man kanns es auch gut als Crash-Ride durchlaufen lassen, jedoch bezweifle ich, dass es dann von der Lebensdauer lange halten wird. Mir egal - solange der Preis weiterhin stimmt.

Fazit: Istanbul Becken kann man für den heutigen Preis quasi ungesehen kaufen und hat ein Produkt, welches klanglich mit Zildjian, Sabian und vielen Paiste Becken mithalten kann.