In 1975 I purchased a chrome over wood Slingerland kit that I travelled extensively with over the next 11 years. This was a monster kit with a 28x14 bass drum, a 15x12 rack tom, a 18x16 floor tom, as well as a 20x18 floor tom. John Bonham was clearly a huge influence on my drummimg and I wanted to duplicate his sound. Later, I bought a 16x16 floor tom and used it as a rack tom as well. The sound of this kit was incredible, especially in large venues. At that time I was in a recording band called Moxy from Toronto. The band was very successful in the southern US, especially in Texas where we headlined large shows. In their very early days, AC/DC opened 3 shows for us in Texas in 1977. When we played at the Whisky a Go Go in Hollywood, many well known drummers came to watch as they had heard about these monster drums with a monster sound!
On our way home from one of our tour’s last gigs, the flight cases I carried them in got wet in a flood. Unfortunately, I was not aware that they were wet and the drums were put in the cases by the road crew and stored in our warehouse for 3 months. While preparing for our next tour, I opened the cases to find that the chrome was completely rusted. I decided to remove the chrome, sand off the glue and refinish the wood that was underneath the chrome. What I found was the bass drum was a maple shell whereas the other 3 drums were mahogany. In order to tie in the maple bass drum with the other drums, I added a strip of mahogany down the middle of the bass drum hoops. It really helped to bring them all together as a set.
Once they were finished I sold them to a friend, who was an up and coming drummer, in 1988. A few months ago, he asked me if I wanted the drums back as he had just been storing them at his house. Of course I said yes and after 37 years I was reunited with my kit.
It is amazing that I got these drums back with only minor repair work to do. The bass drum had not been stored in a case so the maple veneer had started to crack and lift. I bought an inexpensive furniture repair kit on Amazon and filled in the cracks as best as I could. To be honest, especially looking at them on stage, the filled in cracks just look like a natural grain in the wood.
The leg mounts on the 70’s Slingerland drums are prone to strip as the legs are secured with tension bolts (t-bolts). Once they have been tightened a number of times, they often give way and strip. I had at least 6 stripped leg mounts in my “old parts” bin so I bought a heli-coil kit and fixed them all. All you do is drill out the existing hole, re- tap it with the appropriate size tap and put in the new heli-coil. In this case, it was a 5/16-24 heli-coil needed to create the new thread. Between using these refurbished leg mounts, mounts from some of my other Slingerland drums, and rethreading some existing mounts on this kit, I was able to replace/repair all of the mounts that were stripped. I did the same thing for the bass drum spur mounts. In this case I used a ¼”-20 standard thread. This saved me an incredible amount of money as used Slingerland mounts were between $60 - $85 US each on eBay. As I live in Canada each mount would have been close to $200 after tax, exchange, shipping and customs.
I’m not sure if I will ever be able to use this kit in a band again as it is a monster. Maybe I can rent it out for a movie set or a video shoot. It is such a novel vintage drum kit and will certainly catch your eye.