The Keeper of the Sound
A 2006 Interview with Robert Paiste by Fritz Steger (translated from German)
The origins of the Paiste company lie in Estonia. The word Paiste means " shine ", a symbol that continues today in various logos of the cymbal series.
The Estonian born musician and composer Michail Toomas Paiste (1872 - 1930) founded a publishing house and a music shop in Saint Petersburg in 1901, where musical instruments were also manufactured and repaired.
The business flourished until the upheaval in Russia in 1916, when the October Revolution forced him to return to Estonia. In Tallinn, he and his son Mikhail M. Paiste began to design and manufacture cymbals for concert and marching bands.
They made cymbals according to the Turkish design, which they preferred to the Chinese style of cymbals. During this time, he also developed the first gongs. The resulting instruments received awards and recognition and he began to export them to Europe, USA and overseas.
Due to World War II, his son, Mikhail M. Paiste (1907 - 1963) was forced to leave Estonia in 1940 and rebuild the family business in German occupied Poland. The company struggled with the shortage of raw materials caused by the war and the difficulty of maintaining international contacts. Towards the end of the war, Paiste and his family left Poland as refugees. He then rebuilt his business in Brunsbüttel (Schleswig Holstein), Germany. The third generation, his sons Robert and Toomas, then led the company to the top of the world in cymbal making.
While Toomas (1939 - 2002) drove sales and was very present in public, Robert (1932 - 2016) was the mastermind behind many of the developments and patents that gave Paiste its outstanding reputation.
He was considered an introvert and lived a very reclusive life. In 2006, I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Robert Paiste that lasted several hours.
I met a good humored friendly senior citizen at the Paiste headquarters in Sursee, Switzerland. He spoke slowly and deliberately, in a sonorous, rasping voice with long pauses, constantly clarifying his own words: (Fritz Steger 2006, Nottwil, Switzerland.)
Mr. Paiste, you were born in 1932. Can you remember when you first became aware of the cymbal making craft?
RP: From the beginning, it was always there: I first noticed the rhythmic sound of hammering. It started in Estonia, when I was eight. Then we came to Poland, which was German occupied and it was already war at that time.
In Estonia the school began as late as 8 years. Before that you went to a kindergarten, there one had already learned the first letters and numbers, but it was rather a kind of preschool.
Because of the lack (of schooling) I spoke only Estonian, at home we spoke mainly Russian, my father (Michail M.) was born in St. Petersburg and later came to Estonia with his father (Michail T.). The first class with 6-year-olds was then not so much fun.
I didn't know German well either and was torn out of my childhood, the first thing I learned while living in Germany was to shout "Heil Hitler"! At that time, one was not allowed to speak Estonian or Russian, but those were my native languages.
That was forbidden by my parents because it was dangerous: If I wanted to say something spontaneously, they would say: "shhhhh! you're not allowed to speak Estonian or Russian, speak in German!"
That somehow became ingrained in me, a kind of language inhibition that accompanied me my whole life, at school I eventually got caught up.
At that time Dad only made brass cymbals, these materials were classified as important for the war effort, from time to time he was allocated some material, of course, it was difficult to plan anything.
Then came the escape from Krakow Poland, that was at the same time as the Wilhelm-Gustloff* was sunk, we came to northern Germany (Jan 1945).
(*)MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German military transport ship which was sunk on 30 January 1945 by Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German civilian refugees from East Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Estonia and military personnel from Gotenhafen as the Russian Red Army advanced.
There was nothing there at first, the capitulation (German surrender, May 1945) came pretty soon, and then there was still nothing. You couldn't buy anything anyway, then in 1948 came the currency reform: everybody got 150.00 marks.
That was the initial business capital (for restarting his business) from which Dad then bought the first brass metal and made the first cymbals, those were the Stambul and Zilko. At that point, Dad became ill and was in the hospital for a long time, the doctors gave him little chance of a full recovery. That's when I dropped out of school and learned the cymbal making trade, I was 17 and from then on I've been making cymbals.
Paiste was the first manufacturer to assign cymbals to to specific specific purposes, how did it come about?
R.P.: Before the war there wasn't much going on with cymbals, there was the orchestral music but the musicians didn't really appreciate the cymbals. That really started after the war, with jazz and other styles of music.
I remember that the Turkish cymbals were sold by weight, So 10 kilos of cymbals cost a certain amount. The cymbals were as they as they came: sometimes thick, sometimes thin, sometimes light, and sometimes heavy.
We found that orchestra people tended to prefer longer decaying cymbals, which we called "gong cymbals", while dance orchestras, such as for the Charleston style, wanted sibilant sounds, that's how the "sizzle cymbals" (with rivets) came about, they also wanted "Charleston cymbals" (at that time the Hi-Hats were called that). That was in the beginning, later came other styles through jazz and other names like medium, heavy, thin, and paper thin.
Did you do all this hammering by hand?
R.P.: Everything, including the bell was hammered out.
When did you start pressing cymbals?
R.P.: First we started to press the bell on the press bench, that was the first relief in labor, because to hammer the bell was a big deal. Later we had a press to do it, which was even more precise.
The cymbals of the other manufacturers in Germany were I think, all pressed, I don't know who started that, but I remember one thing: At some point my father told me that someone had called him and said he had a machine for making cymbals (stamping them into shape) and whether my father had the money to buy it. My father said crossly: "A machine for making cymbals, you can forget that"! The salesman then explained how it works, to which my father said, "We don't make pots and pans, we make cymbals!"
The salesman who called was (Roland) Meinl, that must have been in the early 50s. That was typical Dad, "A machine to make cymbals, you can forget it." He was a craftsman through and through.
At what point did you start using hydraulic hammers?
R.P.: I reckon in 1952 we got the first hammering machine, Dad had organized that, he wanted that.
When I was learning to do cymbals, Dad said, "Look how I do it and do it the same way." I thought "yeah, that's good, but it can be even better", he was the guide, and that's the way it is with hand craftsmanship: craftsmanship is never 100 percent accurate no matter how precise you want to hammer, no matter how exact you want to make it, some kind of deviation always creeps in. When the mistakes add up, it's just too much, hand craftsmanship is never perfect.
He then set up the hammering machine and told us to work with it, but my colleagues said : "I won't touch that machine!" But I was interested, so I started to try. At the beginning it didn't really work, then I slowly got into it and learned how to use it, the others saw that I was much faster and the cymbal was hammered much more precisely, that's how it grew. That was good about my father: he gave you the input, the hint, he didn't push, but left it up to you to figure the rest out!
You then went to Switzerland in 1957, how did that happen?
R.P.: That was a very important step for us, we had originally been “settled” in Germany.
We were fleeing from communism and we were afraid that communism would advance further, we wanted to go to the USA at that time but they were working with quotas and the quota for Estonian refugees had been filled.
So, we were stuck in Germany for the time being, and we quickly had to make something by ourselves in the post war period, but Germany was not our choice.
We then thought of Sweden or Switzerland, at that point they were considered safe countries, from what I knew Switzerland was democratic, neutral, and centrally located in Europe.
So in 1957 I went to Switzerland alone, my brother Toomas was 7 years younger and still in school so he couldn't go, I started to build cymbals on my own in a single room.
What our family learned during this time was to build something new from nothing.
Here in Switzerland you then came out with a new series called the "Super Formula 602", how did that come about?
R.P.: We had brass and nickel silver as materials in Germany. Both metals did not achieve such a tone or sound like 20-percent bronze. We were aware of that, but there was no way to get other material at the time.
Since we had to work with a poorer material compared to bronze, we inevitably developed skills and ways to get the best sound possible; with bronze this would not have been necessary.
In Switzerland we went to various metal works, they said that they could not roll B20 bronze, one metal worker then said they would try. They rolled a sample about 6mm thick, but then they were done, they were getting nowhere, they couldn't make it any thinner.
I took it to several metal works but got nowhere with them either. At the very end, I found out that there was a small rolling mill on the other side of the lake (Sursee), I went there, but they too said they couldn't roll B20 bronze.
One of the guys there then told me "We have a small rolling mill, it's empty, you can try it there yourself". He gave me a metal worker to help and little by little, I got it so thin you could make a cymbal out of it!
We made some cymbals and went back to the mill and showed them, the master was an older man and he couldn't believe it at first, but he saw the piece I had rolled, he said, "If you can do it, we can do it”.
That's how our B20 super formula started, we gained experience with the material and after a short time we produced the "Super formula 602" cymbal, hence the name Super, which we later dropped.
In 1966 you developed the flat ride cymbal, how did that come about?
R.P.: The Flat Ride is the first and the last cymbal that more or less came out of a gag. That was with Joe Morello, he visited here once and at that time there were these new super thin watches, he was fascinated with his new super thin watch that he had just got.
He said, "why don't you make a cymbal like that?" I wondered, what does a cymbal without a bell sound like? Well, we were making gongs, but I didn't relate to that, we built prototypes, which surprised us very much with the sound.
How did you come up with the idea of the Sound Edge Hi- Hat?
R.P.: Definitely through the "airlock", after conversations at our drummer meetings (Paiste drummer service) where I realized that airlock was a problem for many drummers.
Besides the Formula 602, the 2002 series was another milestone that made Paiste a leading cymbal manufacturer.
R.P.: In the early days of the Formula 602, we often had the problem that dealers didn't want to buy our cymbals. They said they were good, but they had the wrong name on them (not a Zildjian) that led me to deal directly with the drummers.
I learned what they were looking for and what was important to them. We held gatherings called “drummer meetings” where we had our cymbals played. There were tryouts , discussion, questions, criticism, and that's how we learned what the drummers liked and didn't like. That's how the "Paiste Drummer Service" was born. Because we make the sound for the drummer. Therefore, it's his/her sound, not our sound, and not my sound. My great endeavor was to adapt the sound of the cymbals to the changing styles of music.
In the 60s there were new changes in music styles and the drummers said they had problems with the cymbals competing against the big volume on stage, so I looked for a material to do just that and found the “eight” bronze (B8).
First we built the Stambul 65 out of this material, which would have all the parameters of the Stambul series. Then we built the Giant Beat series. At some point we combined the Stambul 65 and Giant Beat and drew the experiences
together and so gradually the 2002 was born.
Do you have any recollection of how the name 2002 came about?
R.P.: That was supposed to be forward-looking. The series was ready in 1970/71 and we had the conviction that we had put our best and latest experience in it. 2002 looked good visually and was also easy to remember.
At the time, did you expect the series to exist beyond the year 2002?
R.P.: No, none of us expected that, we thought towards the middle of the 80s that the 2002 had to change further and then developed the 3000 series. We expected that this further development would displace the 2002 series, but the market decided otherwise.
Then all of a sudden, the sales figures for 2002 shot up?
'R.P.: Correct. However, the knowledge gained at that time merged into the B15 alloy a few years later, which again combined the knowledge of all our series. We were very proud of it and therefore it should only bear our name. Later it was called "Signature" or "Signature Line" by the drummers.
With the "Signature", in the sense of the signature of a well-known artist, two of your competitors in the 80's claim to have been the first to implement this idea. However, you were the first to do so in 1967 with the Joe Morello Signature Ride.
R.P.: That may well be. But I couldn't care less. Marketing has never interested me: I was always just about the sound!
Bill Ludwig Jr. writes in his autobiography that during his time as an importer of Paiste cymbals, Ludwig had extreme quality problems with the Formula 602, he states that pieces were missing from the broken cymbals, as if a large animal had bitten them off! These statements severely damaged your reputation for a long time in the 70s and 80s, especially in the U.S. What do you think about it today?
R.P.: We first sold the Stambul series of nickel silver to Ludwig (Ludwig "3 star & Ludwig standard" cymbals). These were the exact same cymbals that were sold in Europe.
Later they wanted the Formula 602 as well, but they said they weren't thin enough for the American market, they wanted them even thinner.
Did you make them thinner then?
R.P.: I think we made them a little thinner, yes.
Ludwig talks about needing a dedicated basement room to house all the cracked cymbals. When you think about how many cymbals you can stack on top of each other, that seems a bit fantastic. That would have to be millions of broken cymbals!
R.P.: This is his story. When three adults have participated in something in the past, there are three different stories that come out after just one year. Our cymbals broke no more and no less in America than everywhere else, American dealers have told us that. Of course, we exchanged the broken cymbals. But on the other hand, this fact was very much exploited by the competition to damage and break us. It is very easy to talk something like this up and insanely hard to get away from it again.
Ludwig continues: After a legal dispute with Paiste, they agreed on a 10% discount on future orders as compensation for the broken cymbals. The ink was not yet dry when Paiste raised the prices by 10%, whereupon he ended the business relationship forever.
R.P.: Which is surprising and something I never understood in and of itself. A lot of the cymbals that broke in America actually had those big missing pieces that Ludwig also described. And I still don't understand to his day why that was the case.
I guess in retrospect, Ludwig had done quite a bit with marching corps with his drums. They play without respect, brutally with their huge sticks and they play loud in the first place. But in and of itself it doesn't matter.
We never had any legal conflicts with Ludwig. That's simply not true what he says. The thing with the so called discounts, that's not true either, for a certain period we had given them discounts for advertising and promotion.
When prices were raised, everyone raised their prices because the material became expensive. What is true is that he dropped us without warning.
That must have hit you hard economically, you must have had to invest a lot of new money at that time?
R.P.: We started very small and limited and then built more and more. Ludwig ordered more and more of the nickel silver cymbals. We were expanding anyway.
The Formula 602 didn't start going to America until we were somewhat established in the European market and had built up an image. And it is true, Ludwig had a considerable share of our total volume and certainly 60% of all sales to America.
From the simple and logical realization that it was too risky to concentrate on only one market, we set out to achieve a balance with expansion mainly in the European market. On the other hand, it was tempting to give in to the constant demand from America, as we could use the money for new investments. When an order like that falls away you notice it, that was a hard time, about one and a half to two years, we bridged one year in order to keep the team.
It takes a long time for someone to learn how to make cymbals, we had the agreement with our people that we had to do other things: we built switch cabinets for the signage factory, we built snow chains and we overhauled carburetors for the Swiss military. Then it picked up again, then it was good again.
We could only get through an exercise like that because our family history taught us to deal with hopeless situations, Dad did that and I took over from my father, I was there.
These are the advantages of it in later life. At the time, of course, such times are not so much fun, times of war, times of being refugees.
In one respect I am very grateful to the Ludwig family: My father already had business contacts with Ludwig Senior while we were in Estonia, In the post-war period the Ludwigs sent us care packages which at that time could not be paid for with money.
Your brother Toomas was more present in public as " Mr. Paiste", although you yourself were in charge of the product development, how did you feel about that?
R.P.: The two of us enjoyed a very unique, super complementary relationship. You can't plan something like that, I am by nature more introverted, more intuitive, focused on the craft, on the sound, on the internal, the structure, the organizing.
And Toomas was extroverted, traveling, talking, negotiating, selling, promoting. And so we complemented each other. It is probably rare to find such an ideal combination of brothers, there were two energies working on the same goal from two different sides.
Robert Paiste passed away at the age of 84 on November 15, 2016.
"Sound is vibration, and vibration is energy. Life energy is vibration and sound, also. So, for us, sound is part of a very deep, basic truth. We are not the only ones who feel like this. There are so many musical-minded drummers who get the same exciting feeling from playing their cymbals. It's not just the sound. It's the vibration, the touch, how it feels, and how it speaks to the drummer. It's a wonderful feeling to produce something, hand it over to the drummers, and see them get the same response. There's a deep truth behind it." – Robert Paiste
A special thanks go to Fritz Steger of Drumhouse.com for supplying the interview.
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