Hello Everyone,
I’m a long time banjo player who has spent many enjoyable hours on here reading about tone ring alloys and construction from the revered pre war Gibson rings and also so many of the modern builders.
I am also a part time drummer and have spent similar time going down the rabbit hole of various cymbal alloys such as B20 and B8 Bronze and others and the resultant impact on sound and tone.
My question is to the tone ring experts and builders here…are there any similarities to the alloys used for tone rings to the ones used for cymbals?
Back in the Sixties, Harry Sparks was one of the first to make tone rings to convert a pre-war, Gibson, arch top banjo to a flat head.
Sparky used an Xacto knife to scrape metal shavings from the inside of the hanger bolt clearance hole of a flat head tone ring from a pre-war Gibson banjo. Subsequently, he sold that banjo to J. D. Crowe. The metal shavings were analyzed by a metallurgist at a University Of Cincinnati testing laboratory, using mass spectrometry. The results of the analysis revealed that the material was bronze, with a composition of 80% copper and 20% tin. The metallurgist advised Sparky that the analysis also revealed evidence of other trace elements in the metal shavings. In the opinion of the metallurgist, the presence of trace elements was due to contamination associated with the casting process. He suggested that if Sparky wanted to duplicate the material in the metal shavings, he should cast his tone rings using only virgin ingot bell bronze with the 80% copper and 20% tin composition.
In discussions I’ve had with Steve Huber and Curtis McPeake, both contended that there are other, necessary elements in addition to copper and tin in the pre-war Gibson tone rings. The compositional formulas that include those other elements are, as Bill Monroe once said, “right smart of secret”.
Edited by - RB3 on 10/27/2026 08:40:13
Thanks Wayne,
That's really interesting as bronze with a 80% copper 20% tin composition is known as B20 Bronze in the cymbal world and is what the majority of higher end cymbals are made of. I image that it would be really close to the bronze used in tonerings.
Much like the tonering world many cymbal makers keep their other trace elements "right smart of secret" as well !
Edited by - CdnPicker on 10/27/2026 09:30:28
Very interesting topic . Thanks for posting .
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