If brass cracked easily when frozen buildings wouldn't be decorated with it.

Unless there is visible cracking he's probably fine.

I am not a metallurgist, but people have been touring drums, cymbals, amplifiers, guitars, keyboards etc. for decades. All this gear gets shipped in non-climate controlled trucks in 100+ temperatures to as low as you can imagine. In my case I have toured shows as low as -48. Cymbals still seem to be cymbals when we pull them out of a case. I wouldn't worry about it at all.

no worries i think..

mike

Yes, they should be fine...I would tell him to let them gradually warm up to ambient temperature before playing them to be on the safe side...

Cheers

All those brass Church bells that have been in the cold at the top of bell towers seem to do OK out in the cold.Hmmmm

However, I do agree that they should be allowed to warm to room temp before whacking them.:)

WAY back when I endorsed Sabian, I had a set of cymbals shipped ahead and stored in Florida. They were at the bottom of a heavy stack. The combination of extreme summer heat in the storage unit and constant pressure did in fact change the cymbals. Luckily, I had just recorded and video taped them prior to packing them up. The A/B video and recording work made it very clear the sonic and physical differences. The insurance company replaced them and Sabian made me some new ones. Don't know if this helps, but it did occur.

Of course compression will change relatively soft metals.

Frozen cymbals surely sound differently than at normal temperature.

I've recently experienced this with my Paiste 2oo2 hats. I don't know if they're more brittle, too.

I have played a few shows outdoors at - 30 Celsius (or so), -22 Fahrenheit (there, I looked it up), often with hot air blowers on stage, and I honestly didn't feel much change from my cymbals and did not damage them. My shells, on the other hand, were probably suffering horribly (sigh)...come to think of it, my cymbals have been in their case, in my trunk overnight in -20 to -40 C many times. The Québec winters are long and brutal x-mas2