This is a companion article to one about Gretsch round badge drums published in December 2020.[i] This study involves Ludwig Keystone badge drums with serial numbers produced from late 1963 to late 1969.
Many collectors place a premium on born together drum sets. However, very few vintage drum sets come with original receipts or reliable histories which can assure owners or potential buyers that the sets were originally purchased as one unit from the factory or music instrument retailer. When documentation is not present, many look for sets with closely grouped serial numbers. But how close is close enough? Should numbers be sequential, within a hundred, within several thousand? Without an established standard, it is a judgment call on the part of the potential buyer, owner or appraiser regarding what constitutes an acceptable range of serial numbers for a born together set. It often seems that when one is buying and paying a premium for a born together set, the number is very low. But when seeking that price premium, sellers use a higher standard when they apply the born together label. This study is an attempt to gain greater understanding of the actual distribution of serial number ranges in vintage Ludwig sets purported to be born together to establish a benchmark.
Use of serial number range to determine that a set was likely born together requires an understanding of Ludwig’s production procedures. It is widely accepted that Ludwig did not apply its serial number stamped badges in sequential order. [ii] Further, during the 1960s Ludwig appears to have generally manufactured to stock rather than to fill specific orders, meaning that orders for shipment may have been filled from inventory by pulling individual drums which were not necessarily manufactured together. Additional variation may have been introduced when drums were put together as sets by retailers. Therefore, a certain amount of difference between serial numbers within a born together set should be expected. However, these realities are often ignored when determining if a set of drums was born together. One should be careful to not let the desire for very close proximity in serial numbers triumph over the reality of Ludwig’s production and warehousing practices.
The first step is to investigate serial number ranges seen on verified born together sets. Unfortunately, surprisingly few reports of born together drum sets are reliable and well-documented. More than just a seller’s claim is necessary to pass this test. Additional evidence must be present to support that the set was born together. Eight sets with reliable histories are found and listed below:
1. Ringo Starr’s second Downbeat set - range of 679 (6642 - 7321)[iii]
2. Ringo Starr’s first Super Classic set - range of 66,325 (33571 - 89896)
3. Ringo Starr’s second Super Classic set - range of 3,884 (151480 – 155364)
4. Ringo Starr’s Hollywood set - range of 6,121 (464609 - 470730)
5. An original owner Downbeat set ordered May 3, 1965, and received September 18, 1965 - range of 33,809 (173659 – 207468)
6. An original owner Super Classic set known to have been received new as a Bar Mitzvah gift in 1965 - range of 39,950 (189246 – 229206)
7. A 12/16/20 configuration purchased by original owner on April 4, 1967 - range of 30,101 (470147 - 501248)
8. A Hollywood set with receipt from September 28, 1968 - range of 1,698 (565933 – 567631)
These sets have serial number ranges spanning from 679 to 66,325 with an average value of 22,817. Although interesting, a sample size of eight is not sufficient to establish a reliable estimate for the expected range of a born together drum set. Additional investigation is necessary.
The next step is to expand the list to include sets which lack documentation yet may have been originally purchased together. Information is gathered from reports of partial and complete drum sets from current owners and internet sites including eBay, Reverb, Facebook, Drumforum.org and VintageDrumForum.com. Many of the reports contain express representations that they were born together. Other sets are merely presented together with no claims as to their origin. Although the lack of born together claims are often due to lack of knowledge about the history of the drums, in some cases they appear to be intentional failure to admit that sets have been cobbled together. Not every set reviewed earns a spot on the expanded study list. Sets with fewer than three complete serial numbers[iv] and sets which are described as pieced together are not included. Sets which possess serial number ranges above 120,000 are also not included, as this represents about a year of production and serial number usage during the Keystone badge era.[v] Excluding sets based upon a large serial number range when attempting to identify an expected serial number range requires a bit of circular logic, but at this stage, the range is large enough to err on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion. Finally, subjective factors like the physical features of the drums, consistency of the degree of fade in finish, overall originality of the drums, and the reputation of the seller/owner of the drums are employed to include or exclude sets from the list.
The resulting list of 428 sets appears by several indicators to be an appropriate group for further study. The lowest serial number range in the group is nine, the highest is 119,801 and the average is 21,501. The first graph shows the distribution of these 428 sets. It is very biased towards the left side, with lower serial number ranges far outnumbering the larger ones. Eighty percent (342 of 428, 80%) of the drums are in sets which had serial number ranges of 40,000 or less. About two-thirds (290 of 428, 68%) of the drums are in sets which had serial number ranges of 20,000 or less. The steep rate as which the numbers drop off as the serial number range increases suggests that at least some of these 428 sets at the higher end of the spectrum were not likely to have been born together.
The next step is to cull from the study group some sets included in the initial group of 428 which have larger serial number ranges. The 40,000 point seems like a reasonable cut off point for further analysis. This excludes only 86 of the 428 in the original group. Reducing the study to just the 342 drum sets with serial number ranges below 40,000 may exclude a few born together drum sets, including one of Ringo Starr’s, but also excludes a large number of sets which are likely not born together and therefore are not appropriate for this study. With this reduced data set, the highest serial number range in the group is now 39,960. The average range is 8,497. This group of 342 drums, shown in the second graph, is also left side biased, although not as drastically as the first graph. More than half (186 of 342, 54%) of the sets with ranges below 40,000 have ranges below 5,000. More than three-quarters (271 of 342, 79%) of these sets have ranges below 15,000. Almost all (324 of 342, 95%) of them have ranges below 30,000.
Culling the number of sets analyzed further results in a less left-biased and much more evenly spread distribution, indicating that the culling has perhaps gone too far. A variety of groupings was considered, with the 120,000 and 40,000 ranges discussed above considered to be the most instructive.
Based upon the results of both approaches to this issue, the appropriate benchmark for the range of serial numbers for born together sets appears to be somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000. This boundary captures the majority of the drums in the data set and includes seven of eight of the specific well-documented examples of born together sets discussed above. There is a certain amount of subjectivity to this number, despite the attempt to quantify it with objective data. Setting any hard and fast benchmark may exclude some legitimate born together sets, so it should be considered a guideline and not a rule. It is possible that some legitimate born together sets which have higher than expected serial number ranges are a result of the more extreme vagaries of Ludwig’s serial number assignment procedures. Regardless of the exact benchmark selected, the smaller the range of serial numbers within a group of drums, the more likely that they were born together at the factory. This is consistent with the strong tendency toward the issuance of serial numbers in roughly sequential order and echoes the basic rationale used by most vintage drum enthusiasts.
Comments and suggestions for further analysis are welcome. Contact the author at Rick@GretschDrumDatingGuide.com.
Copyright Reserved © Richard E. Gier 2021
[i] Richard E. Gier, “Serial Number Ranges of ‘Born Together’ Vintage Gretsch Round Badge Drum Sets,” http://www.gretschdrumdatingguide.com/other-projects.html and https://www.notsomoderndrummer.com/not-so-modern-drummer/2020/12/6/serial-number-ranges-of-born-together-vintage-gretsch-round-badge-drum-sets, December 2020.
[ii] About two percent of drums studied had serial numbers more than 50,000 above or below the predicted value based upon documented serial number/date stamp combinations. Richard E. Gier, Serial Number Based Dating Guides for Vintage Ludwig Drums – Main Line Drums 1963-1984 & Standard Drums 1968-1973, Rebeats Publications, 2013, at page 8.
[iii] Information about Ringo Starr’s sets from Gary Astridge’s website – www.ringosbeatlekits.com.
[iv] The practice of reporting partial serial numbers (i.e.: 123xxx instead of 123456) contributed to several sets being excluded.
[v] Approximately 749,000 serial numbers were used during the six-year period between late 1963 and late 1969, for an annual average of 125,000.