Zildjian Decoding Serial Numbers

Laser Stamps

Laser stamps started on Zildjian Cymbals in 1994. Cymbals from before that time are referred to as pre serial by some people. There are far more distinctions which can be made in the pre 1994 cymbals based on ink and trademark stamps, and production details like hammering and lathing style. Not all lines or series of Zildjian cymbals have an added line with a serial number. If you don't have a serial number (extra bottom line) then you are looking at a lower line (not A Zildjian or K Zildjian family).

If you have a trademark on your cymbal which looks like this with an extra bottom line:

or this K version of the stamp:

then you can find out when your cymbal was manufactured. For example, in the Avedis stamp the serial (below the Made in USA) begins JJ so that is 2000. The year is encoded by 1 = A, 2 = B, up to I = 9 and J = 0. The K version shown above is AJ so that is 2010. Thanks to Rob Scott for the decode.

The first two letters code the year. The rest of that line contains a batch number and a unique id within the batch. The batch number codes what sort of cymbal it is (diameter, series, model) and Zildjian can look up this info the identify a cymbal. The unique id at the end is 008 in the case of the A Zildjian stamp shown above, so this is the 8th cymbal from the batch 11236.

The laser trademarks look rather scruffy when magnified because the laser is just doing a "good enough" resolution. The image is made from lots of little dots and/or strokes of the laser.

Year and Letter Code

• 1994 ID
• 1995 IE
• 1996 IF
• 1997 IG
• 1998 IH
• 1999 II
• 2000 JJ
• 2001 JA
• 2002 JB
• 2003 JC
• 2004 JD
• 2005 JE
• 2006 JF
• 2007 JG
• 2008 JH
• 2009 JI
• 2010 AJ
• 2011 AA
• 2012 AB
• 2013 AC
• 2014 AD
• 2015 AE
• 2016 AF
• 2017 AG
• 2018 AH
• 2019 AI
• 2020 BJ
• 2021 BA
• 2022 BB
• 2023 BC 400th Anniversary since 1623 see also Special Prefix below
• 2024 BD
• 2025 BE <<<<<<<<< you are here
• 2026 BF

Until at least the year 2002 (JB) the laser serial number appears at 12 o'clock just like the pre laser trademark stamps did. After that it moves to 3 o'clock. However, there are exceptions. This pair of 10" Special Recording Hats is from 1996 and have a 3 o'clock laser stamp. If you look at the amount of surface taken up by the upside down ink logos you can imagine that having the laser stamp clear of that area made 3 o'clock a good choice. The other informative aspect to these is that the batch numbers for top and bottom hats are different and they have letters included not just digits. We will come back to batch number variation below.

• 

  Special Recording Hats

• 

  Serial Number 1

• 

  Serial Number 2

Special Prefix 400th Anniversary

In honor of the 400th Anniversary there is a 400 prefix written using the Turkish numerals for some batches. They appear to be from the second half of 2023.

Ordinary Batch Numbers

Most laser stamps follow the standard convention of encoding the year in the first two letters. Batch Number follows, and these are mostly 5 or 6 characters. There are some 4 character batch names as well. But just when you thought it was going to be easy to get the year from the serial number on any cymbal after 1994...there are a few exceptions. The first celebrates the new millennium. I don't know how many of these exist, although this one has unique -0698 at the end.

In addition to the one off millennium laser stamp there are a few recorded which don't have the usual pattern of two upper case letters. These are thought to be special endorser cymbals but we don't really know for sure. In some cases they certainly seem to be:

In other cases they could just be typos when telling the laser what to print

This could be a 2009 typo (JI) or it could be something else.

4 Character Batch Numbers and Prototypes

There are some 4 character batch numbers and they usually indicate experiments and prototypes. One is 1623, clearly a special number in the Zildjian story. According to mattr posting on DFO these are usually employee serial numbers from the individual on the R&D team developing that model. He recalled

0643 Paul Francis
1118 Joe
1613 Mattr
1623 unknown used since at least 2015

As to how many prototypes there might be for a model, we have this:

A prototype such as a Bounce would have had only 1 to 3 batches of maybe 15-25 cymbals made per year. A batch for PASIC for sure, some to targeted artists, and some that would have gone to Zildjian Day events at Memphis or Long Island Drums shops, etc. and some to England for the UK office.