Groove Juice GJCC Cymbal Cleaner

After 20 years of not playing drums, my wife bought me a used kit for the holidays. It came with some low end Zildjian cymbals that had been improperly stored in a damp environment for several years. The cymbals were an old dirty penny brown and I tried everything to polish them up, including Flitz and Never Dull. These products didn't make a dent AT ALL. I posted some photos on Amazon of the before and after. I did about five or six applications (heavy rubber gloves/eye protection) and scrubbed with a heavy nylon brush. Once the juice starts penetrating the layers of gunk, it looks like it starts to eat it away. The less gunk, the faster it works. Using the brush was a bad idea because it actually scratched the cymbal. Just using my gloved fingers to rub in the juice in worked just as good, if not better. I did several apply and rinse applications. I admit, I left it on for way longer than the recommended 30 seconds, but my cymbals were so nasty they needed it. If you have fairly new cymbals a quick spray and rinse will probably do you. Since my stuff was old and low-end and I wasn't concerned if I damaged them or made them worse, I could experiment. They did not come out the mirror brass shiny they once were (see photo of the underside of one of my cymbals for the original color), but they came out a nice new penny copper, which I like. I'm not into the mirror gold cymbal look anyway. Groove Juice is good stuff for your old cymbals. And Yes, it does take the black lettering off, especially if you rub the lettering.

I've used a lot of different cleaners over the years and this was by far the easiest to use and just as effective (if not better) than the others. Just spray on, wait about 30 seconds, rinse under water, and dry with a cloth. No buffing needed. Used on Zildjian A Customs, Sabian AAX (brilliant finish) and Sabian HHX (brilliant finish). Cymbals look great! For one cymbal with heavy finger printing, I did rub in a little at the edge with a cloth. Cleaned up perfectly. I sprayed on the logos and rinsed off with no damage. DO NOT rub the logos when cleaning or drying if you want to keep them. Blot the logos when drying or rub VERY lightly.

The product does work reasonably well, and is much much easier than traditional cleaning pastes. Relatively clean cymbalss or areas of cymbals came out shining nicely. However on spots where my fingers grab the cymbals they were pretty heavily oxidized - even greenish - and although it got most of that off they didn't shine like new in those spots. With continued treatment they might, but I found that even on areas that came out nicely shining it is a bit blotchy. I thought this might be because it's somewhat difficult to evenly pump the stuff onto the Cymbal (not a supper high quality pump bottle), but even when reapplying carefully the blotchiness remained. All in all the cymbals looks much better than before so it's not a huge deal.But a warning. If you want to remove the logos etc then this is the product for you! at least on my Sabian cymbals spraying over the print didn't affect it, but rubbing (or even drying) afterwards definitely takes the ink right off. So I ended up spraying over it and then just sort of detailing carefully with a thin cloth. Difficult to do a good job, and that part of the Cymbal comes out looking like a remaining soiled area, and actually stands out now where as before it blended right it. Not sure what to do about that buy it's disappointing.

Cleaned my cymbals with this stuff for the first time today, and it removed virtually all the grime and stains. My cymbals look practically new now! I did heed everyone else's warnings about how the stuff would remove the printing stamped on the cymbals, so I specifically did not rub hard (with a soft rag) in those areas, and after cleaning I rinsed the cymbals off well with water, so hopefully there's no residue to continue eating away at the printing. As recommended by my cymbal manufacturer, after cleaning, rinsing, and drying, I also treated the cymbals with Paiste Cymbal Protector. Playing on the cymbals after this re-introduced visible stick marks, but they appear to be resisting fingerprints and such, at least for now. A note, though: the bottle isn't all that big, and cleaning my 7 cymbals (including hi-hats) seemed to use about a quarter of the bottle, so if you have a ton of cymbals, maybe buy more than one bottle. But I'll definitely be using the remaining stuff I have over time!

Works great. Much less work than Zidljian cymbal paste I’ve tried before this. Logos seemed unaffected.

This stuff will clean your cymbals, fairly well too. There are a few problems though.The first, as has been mentioned, is the odor. It's not that it is terrible, it just isn't plesant and it is very strong. I would highly recommend using it outside if possible. Mostly because it is hard to breath when using it indoors. The odor doesn't linger though so if you must use it inside a particulate filiter may help.The second is it didn't get my cymbals as nice looking as I expected it to. It definitely made them better but nothing like new. Again, they are much cleaner than before but because they are still not new looking I actually think I'd have been better off leaving them.The third, and part of the reason it may be better to just leave them, is it started to remove the printing on the cymbals. It didn't completely remove the printing but it made it very light. Another cleaning with this stuff and it would likely be gone.I'd say this stuff would be more useful in a couple of situations. First is if you used it occasionally on new cymbals to keep them looking new. Mine were older and quite dingy and stained. As I said they did get brighter but no where near new. If you used it on newer cymbals every so often it would likely keep them looking like new. The second thing is that you would have to be willing to lose any lettering printed on the cymbals. I know some people have no issue at all with this as most cymbals are stamped anyway. Other will have a problem with it and so they should avoid using this.