I didn’t go looking for a story when I bought this drum kit. At the time, I thought I was simply stepping into vintage drums more intentionally than I ever had before.

“In my humble view, this century young visual and sonic masterpiece features one of the most beautiful finishes to ever adorn a drum”

But what makes me curious (and has stumped a good few people more in the know than I am) is the wrap. It is (now considerably yellowed) WMP but it has these gold & silver strands running through it.

An often-overlooked part of a Vintage MIJ kit is the Bass Drum Pedal. Most Japanese pedals back then had no name or markings and were pretty generic looking, but Pearl had their “SPEED PEDAL”, no doubt inspired by the Ludwig Speed King and Star had their “PRO PEDAL”, and there is even a “TOP PEDAL” out there. Not to be outdone Gracy via Yan Drum had their “FOOT PEDAL”

For me this drum is a keeper, it has so many of the things I look for in a snare drum, thin shell, solid lugs, stick-saver hoops, a reliable strainer, and a stunning wrap. If you find a Gracy like this one out there, I highly recommend!

Presenting the most durable and authentic looking replacements for missing or cracked/broken factory original Rim Clips, Tube Lugs and Tension Rods. 

Designed and precision manufactured to meet the specification tolerance and appearance requirements for factory original fittings on 1920’s and 30’s Ludwig & Ludwig snare drums in both Deluxe (new or aged) and Bright Nickel finishes.

Sears not only owned the Sears brand name, but they also owned the Silvertone name which they used for musical instruments and their electronics, but they were also okay with not branding their instruments at all. In fact, most of the drums that came through Sears had no branding at all.

955 WFL Black & White and Colorized versions of the 1955 catalog with a few big differences.

The color is so vibrant and bright it was shocking once I cleaned all the dirt off.

This is a very rare snare drum. Of the 3 dance/band Sensitive models introduced in 1929 I feel that the Standard-Sensitive is the rarest although I would not argue if the New-Era Sensitive was also thought of as the rarest.

Want to sell your gear the old fashioned way? Advertise in NSMD. Also you can let NSMD handle the whole sale on a consignment basis.

I first applied a high solids filling primer to completely fill in the wood grain, followed by a commercial textured coating to effect the irregular surface feature of this finish.  The intermediate and final colour coats were achieved with an antique brass lacquer finish, onto which I sprinkled brass metal flakes.  I then repeated this application sequence a few more times to add depth of finish, before applying a clear lacquer to produce the final ‘satin smooth’ appearance and feel.  Additionally, each piece of the copper re-plated hardware was then treated with my ‘aged patina’ process to simulate almost 100-year-old Deluxe finish.

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,

 It has some beautiful graphics inside, including color pictures of the Black Beauty “Ludwig Deluxe Model” and the “New Ludwigold Irridescent Display Finish”

Now what got me here was my habit of always being on the lookout for drums, especially the stencils, and there were several drum sets that were used on the show, each season this poor struggling family found a way to get a different drum kit.

This Wine Red Ripple 1960s Rogers Swingtime set I am featuring came up for sale a while back and I quickly jumped on it. I was not going to let them get away from me.

This one is a bit of a transitional oddity, nothing earthshaking but a little quirky.

Only six tubular lugs were installed, probably to conserve metal because eight or ten lugs were typical for 15” snare drums before the war.

This drum is in excellent ++ working order. The seamless Powerline metal shell drums sound great and punchy whether tuned low and fat or tight and crisp

We have to go to the Ludwig Drummer Magazines of that time or to dealer flyers to learn of the special “Hotsy-Totsy" and "Mottled Sepia" finishes offered in 1928. 

The Bread-and-Butter lugs are all perfect and the blue glass glitter wrap is flawless. There is not an issue anywhere on the drum. It is in excellent condition. I consider it one of my favorite snares in my collection.

Possibly my favorite is this Rocket badge. This specific badge is my recreation of a pretty rare badge out there, but they nailed that cartoon rocket shape that were found in many toys and comic books in that era. In my searches I could not find any single industry that had so many products that hitched on to space related themes. So it’s official; MIJ Drums are the champions of the universe!

Once someone played a Ghost pedal they had to have one. From drummer to drummer, stories of the Ghost spread first by word-of-mouth.

I got this drum at the Chicago Vintage Drum Show many years ago.

As a long-time collector, I have a fascination with the unusual, the bizarre, and often the ultimately impractical. These drums fall into all three categories.

I decided to write an article covering this to help people identify the three different generations of this parallel throw-off and the versions.

I was wondering if you could assist me with a drum kit. I currently have my father's Brady Drum kit he purchased in around 1992.

In this episode of Sanity Lounge, we sit down with the incredibly talented John Crocken—drummer, craftsman, and creator of Persimmon Drumsticks.

Most of the things I write about are just stating the facts as I have found them, but this one is purely an opinion piece, and just for fun.