Jon wrote:there's a band caled itch who purposely use a broken crash cymbal to get that nice clangy sound. they use it as an intro to a song.

Hella's drummer uses a completely busted cymbal too - it produces a very "plasshhh" smacking sound. Check out the song "Brown Metal".

i have a couple cracked cymbals on my kit...i guess they're not quite all-purpose, but i really really like the sound...one i got from the garbage the other was some pennies at a pawn shop...i actually replaced to "regular" cymbals on my kit...one's a big heavy zildjian ride, someone had previously drilled the ends of the cracks to keep 'em from spreading and i guess it hasn't spread since i've had it...the other one has a strip of cymbal ripped off going partway around it...it definitely has a distinct sound...i still have one regular crash, but i like the sound of the cracked cymbal a lot...

stewie wrote:Hella's drummer uses a completely busted cymbal too - it produces a very "plasshhh" smacking sound. Check out the song "Brown Metal".

i saw them live a couple times. it looked like two or three cracked cymbals of different sizes stacked on top of each other. it does sound pretty cool.

if you get the birthday party dvd "sometimes pleasure heads must burn" you can see that they were always using a cymbal that looked like it was unravelling.