TIM DAISY: The cymbals. I change cymbal setups a lot. The ones I use most often is what you see here, them all Zildjian except for the splash. The splash cymbal here, I just found this here last week ad it's really great. It's made by a company called [PH] Benjian. Never heard of it before but it sounds really good.

The rest of them are Zildjians. This is an old K from the '50s that sounds really great and I really like it. This is an A from the '90s, and my hi-hats are old K's from the '50s as well.

The thing about these Zildjians, the old K's they're kind of like collector's items now so they're really expensive because they used to make -- Well, things have changed now but for a long time it was hard to get new cymbals that sounded like the old series. That's easier to do that now because more companies are starting to make cymbals like they used to, but for a long time if you want to get that old sound, you had to find an old K and they're not cheap. They're going, if you can find a good one, you know they're going from $900 to $1,200 just for one. I looked out, I found this at a recording studio and I got it really for a lot less than that so I'm really happy about it.

[TIM DAISY PLAYING DRUMS]

But it's different for everybody. For me, like I said, I want drums that can respond well and sing really well, and I want cymbals to have a certain kind of definition and a certain kind of decay and a certain kind of washiness to them, and they just made cymbals back in the '50s, they just made them better. You know, they used better materials and it has better craftsmanship.

That's changed. Now I've got this cymbal here made by this company called Spizzichino in Italy, and this guy he hand-hammers his own cymbals. He makes them like they used to make the old Zildjians back in the '50s and '60s, so now it is possible to get cymbals that are made now that sound like the old ones.

GRETCHEN HASSE: So are the -- a lot of new cymbals now are made like machine-made or something?

TIM DAISY: Yeah. A lot of them are machine-made. I would bet a majority of them are.

GRETCHEN HASSE: And how is the sound different for a machine-made cymbal?

TIM DAISY: to me, it just sounds a little bit more -- I don't know how to put it. It sounds more artificial in a way. You know, they don't have as much character to them. You know, they're all machine-lathed and kind of made all by machines. It's like the human element isn't there anymore, you know, the craftsmanship. But, like I said earlier, things have really changed now because a lot of these companies are making really high-quality stuff.

GRETCHEN HASSE: So maybe it's worth it to pay like several hundred dollars for a cymbal?

TIM DAISY: For me, it's worth it. If you find your cymbal, it's something that really speaks to you. It's so valuable that you should pay anything for almost within reason like this K. If I had a thousand, I would have spent a thousand on it just because I heard it and that's what I needed, you know. If you find something that becomes part of your sound, then you really have to have it, so.