[Bell Historians] Who casts the best bells?

[Bickerton, Roderic K (SELEX) (UK)]

Its largely a matter of luck. The best work from the uk foundries is superb, but both can and do have bad days. Once installed the tower acoustics can seriously colour the result.
both the UK foundry's offer variations of weight scale and profile resulting in tonally different bells. Currently there have been a number of bells cast to G and J profiles. Marston Biggot and Crediton are fine examples.

The performance of a single chimed bell is very different to a ringing bell because of the clapper damping, present on a ringing bell and rapidly damping the resonance, but absent on one chimed so opinions about a ringing bell may not be entirely valid for the same bell being chimed.


I know this is a very difficult question with a great many variables
to consider (particularly application), but who casts the finest bells
today?  Eisebouts? Paccard? Petit & Fritsen? Taylor? Whitechapel? Some
other firm?

While my specific application would be for a single swinging bell, I'm
also curious how the Russian bells of Litex, Vera, Zil, etc. compare
to their western counterparts?

I'm well aware that it would be easy to denigrate and then dismiss my
question as being naive and unanswerable, but I really would like to
hear some comments on the product quality levels of today's different
bell foundries.






 
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