Paiste is a musical manufacturing company from Switzerland. The history of Paiste began when an Estonian musician Michail Toomas Paiste produced the first cymbals in 1906 for customer orders. He had opened a music business and music shop before in 1901 in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire. The production included gongs and metal percussion.

In 1917, they were forced to moved to Tallinn, Estonia due to the World War I. It was the time when Toomas’ son Michail M. Paiste decided to concentrate on cymbal production and export. He developed his own cymbals based on the Turkish shape instead of the Chinese. He also developed his own gong designs, setting the standard for modern western style gongs.

In 1940, the operational facility was again forced to move to Poland. This time because of the World War II and then later to Germany in 1945 towards the end of the war. In a difficult postwar environment the company still survived mainly due to the high quality of the instruments and economic recovery known as “Wirtschaftswunder” according to Paiste official website.

A new headquarter and production facility was established in Switzerland in 1957. The company was continued by Michail’s sons, Robert and Toomas (Kurt). In the new facility Robert developed the Formula 602 series cymbal in the late 1950’s and the 2002 series cymbal in the late 1960’s.