Paiste Cymbals
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| corporation/private | |
| Founded | 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia |
| Headquarters | Nottwil, Switzerland |
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Number of locations
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5 |
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Key people
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Erik Paiste, CEO and president of the supervisory board |
| Products | Cymbals, gongs, and metal percussion |
| Subsidiaries | Schacht-Audorf, Germany (German subsidiary), Subsidiary Paiste America (since 1981), Spain & Estonia (both 1995) |
| Website | www.paiste.com |
Paiste (pronounced Pie-Stee, the original Estonian and Finnish pronunciation is pie-ste [ˈpɑistɛ]) is a Swiss-based Estonian manufacturer and designer of cymbals. It is the world's third largest manufacturer of cymbals, gongs, and metal percussion. Paiste is an Estonian and Finnish word that means "shine". Their eponymous sunrise can be seen in the logos for their 2002 line and their Twenty line (discontinued in 2011).
The first Paiste cymbals were produced in 1906 by Estonian musician Michail Toomas Paiste in his instrument repair shop in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to customer orders. Toomas had served in the Czarist Guard, and retired in 1901 to open a music publishing business and music shop.
The cymbal making aspect of the business expanded with the passing years, despite the disruption of several moves necessitated by war, first to Tallinn, Estonia in 1917, where Toomas' son Michail M. Paiste decided to concentrate on cymbal production and export. In 1940 the family and the cymbal making operation moved to Poland, where they continued under extremely difficult conditions, and in 1945 to Germany. Finally in 1957 a new headquarters and production facility was established in Switzerland. The business was continued by Michail's sons Robert and Toomas (born Kurt), with both the Swiss and German operations as the main manufacturing centres. Since 2003, the company is headed by Toomas’ son, Erik. Robert Paiste died in 2016, aged 84.
Paiste has made several innovations to cymbal design and manufacture. Among these are:
Many of these innovations were used by other manufacturers when the applicable patents expired. For example, almost all of the larger modern cymbal companies offer a flat ride cymbal and an alternative to the Sound Edge Hi-Hat.
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Wikipedia