Let me first give you a little bit of background information:
I've been playing music for a little over half a decade now, and have found myself over the last few years getting more and more into drumming. I have a kit (even if it's on the rather cheap side), and some nice cymbals that my friend who became a drummer before me (and somewhat of a mentor on the subject) has loaned me indefinitely.
The setup I'm currently using for my hihat is a Zildjian Mastersound hat top with a Wuhan S series medium hat bottom. Crash #1 is an A Custom 18" crash.
Here's the problem:
I just purchased a brand new ride and secondary crash to go with the setup I've been using. The ride is a Wuhan S series 20" medium heavy ride, and the crash is a Wuhan S series 16" medium crash. As for the "why the hell would I buy these Wuhans?" question, the simple answer is: The same friend who's lending me the hats and crash #1 has the same cymbals (among many others), and I was honestly shocked to hear how good they sounded, especially coupled with the price (about $100 for the pair).
So, as I was saying, the problem is, I just got these brand new cymbals, and to be blunt, they sound awful. Not what I was expecting at all. But the thing is, I can hear that the awfulness is isolated in their shrill, overpowering brightness. I have a decent ear from producing music for the last few years, and I can hear a pair of darker, richer, more mellow and friendly cymbals waiting to come out of their hiding place, just so long as these things don't sound so fresh from the factory.
I spent a couple of hours today doing various things to "break in" these cymbals, with some fairly satisfying results. I had never before heard the myth about burying cymbals, but my instinct with these was to get them as dirty as possible. This idea came from my observations about the hi-hat top that's currently on my kit. When my friend first purchased it, it sounded BAD. Now, maybe 2 years later (and all shininess long gone), it couldn't sound better. It's everything I could hope for. But getting back to the new ride and crash, I gave them the works. I tried my best to put month upon month of rock and roll into them in just a few hours. I rubbed my hands all over them, quickly noticing the factory buffing dulling away. I rubbed tomato sauce from my Subway chicken parmesan sandwich all over them. I rubbed wax from candles on them and lit candles under them to coat them with smoke and wax from the air. I poured beer on them and took them outside to throw them around in the dirt. I hit them as hard as possible with the side of the stick on the edge of the cymbal for minutes on end, rotating them around as I went.
And when I was done for the day, a difference could be heard: They sounded significantly better than when I first took them out of the box. They're mellower and softer, BUT, they're not good enough. They're not even that close to how I can imagine them sounding, how I remember my friend's identical cymbals sounding.
I'm going to stick with them because I'm not a rich man, and I'm confident that in time they'll become much more, if not fully like the cymbals I want to hear on my drumkit, but damnit, I want to record with them, and SOON! So, the whole point of me writing all this is to open the discussion on aging and altering your cymbals, specifically to mellow them out (A LOT). What works? How much does it work? Exactly how do you do it? How long does it take? What doesn't work? Be as specific as possible. It's only a matter of time before I take a hammer to them (which I have no experience doing).
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