meinl
MEINL - A NEW HERITAGE
The gongs look very similar in appearance to Paiste Symphonic Gongs, which is not surprising, as the maker of these gongs is Broder Oetken, one time master gong maker at Paiste. They use blanks from one of the foundries that supplies gong blanks to Paiste. The visual differences are that the scrape marks are horizontal rather than vertical, have ‘Symphonic Tam-Tam, Hand Crafted Masterpiece and made in Germany’ printed onto the top face and the Meinl logo below it. Acoustically, they are very similar to the Paiste Symphonic gongs.
Meinl also sell a range of Planet Gongs but note that both ‘Chiron’ and ‘Sedna’ are different sizes and have different tunings to the ones from Paiste.
Meinl also sell a range of different sized ‘Wu Xing’ or ‘5 Element’ gongs plus two versions of the ‘Flower of Life’ gong. These are essentially symphonic tam-tams tuned to a particular fundamental note. They also offer a range of Chau, Wind and other Chinese gongs sourced from factories in Wuhan in China.