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I've been absent from the forum for about a year and have been keeping busy playing in a couple bands. As well as playing, I started a hobby of buying old, cheap drums and fixing them up. I started with an old 5pc Premier XPK set last spring and then decided to build a nice 4pc Rock/Blues vintage style kit to use as a practice kit. Someone asked me to post some pics of it, so I decided to just make a thread showing the "before & after"....
I started with some early '70s Pearl Maxwin shells that I bought at the local Music-Go-Round for $30. They were in pretty rough shape. The bass drum is 22"x14", the rack tom is 13"x9" and the floor tom is 16"x16". Those are pretty much the traditional sizes found on most drum kits from the 60's & 70's. Pearl Maxwins were the first mass produced Taiwan made drums, designed to target the beginner/student and intermediate drummer. The wood used for them is Luan (Philippine Mahogany), which is considered undesirable by today's standards. Most quality drums are made from Maple or Birch, and the pre-1970s were made from real Mahogany (African). That said, Luan does actually sound very similar to African Mahogany. The quality of the wood and craftsmanship on these old shells is excellent by today's standard.
Once I got the old wrap stripped off the cheap shells, I was surprised at how nice the wood was. With modern wrapped drums, the wood is usually very poor quality on the outside. Since the wrap covers it, they save the nice wood for drums with stained & lacquered finishes.
I spent a ton of time re-working the bearing edges of the shell...getting them flat to within .003"-.005" and hand shaping new bearing edges. The edge is a huge part of the drum's sound. Things like the angle of the bevel, width of the peak and the ply on which the peak is located all determine the character and sound of the drum....as well as how easy it is to tune. The more bearing edge in contact with the drum head, the more resonance you get from the shell (more "woody sound"). The edge profile I chose was a more modern double 45* bevel with a slight round-over on the outside edge to give it that classic vintage sound.
After all that, I decided to try my hand at staining and lacquering the shells, as opposed to rewrapping them. I used water based Minwax pre-treat to raise the grain, then sanded again and stained with water based Sangria Red. After that, I applied 10 spray coats of Deft semi-gloss clear lacquer followed by wet sanding and buffing with 0000 steel wool.
I cleaned all the chrome up and decided to add a used vintage "banana rail" mount and wood hoops to the bass drum (via eBay). I combined the vintage rail mount with a modern rim suspension mount to make a hybrid mount for the 13" tom. The suspension mount allows for more resonance from the tom shell. I also had a local trophy shop make up a custom plaque to cover the existing holes in the bass drum where the original Pearl mount bracket was. The end result is (IMO) a very nice, vintage looking drum set that sounds fantastic. I get tons of complements when we gig, and other drummers cant believe that it all started as a bottom-of-the-barrel, el-cheapo Taiwan imported kit made from junk Luan wood. In many ways, its ALOT like a Festiva.
I started with some early '70s Pearl Maxwin shells that I bought at the local Music-Go-Round for $30. They were in pretty rough shape. The bass drum is 22"x14", the rack tom is 13"x9" and the floor tom is 16"x16". Those are pretty much the traditional sizes found on most drum kits from the 60's & 70's. Pearl Maxwins were the first mass produced Taiwan made drums, designed to target the beginner/student and intermediate drummer. The wood used for them is Luan (Philippine Mahogany), which is considered undesirable by today's standards. Most quality drums are made from Maple or Birch, and the pre-1970s were made from real Mahogany (African). That said, Luan does actually sound very similar to African Mahogany. The quality of the wood and craftsmanship on these old shells is excellent by today's standard.
Once I got the old wrap stripped off the cheap shells, I was surprised at how nice the wood was. With modern wrapped drums, the wood is usually very poor quality on the outside. Since the wrap covers it, they save the nice wood for drums with stained & lacquered finishes.
I spent a ton of time re-working the bearing edges of the shell...getting them flat to within .003"-.005" and hand shaping new bearing edges. The edge is a huge part of the drum's sound. Things like the angle of the bevel, width of the peak and the ply on which the peak is located all determine the character and sound of the drum....as well as how easy it is to tune. The more bearing edge in contact with the drum head, the more resonance you get from the shell (more "woody sound"). The edge profile I chose was a more modern double 45* bevel with a slight round-over on the outside edge to give it that classic vintage sound.
After all that, I decided to try my hand at staining and lacquering the shells, as opposed to rewrapping them. I used water based Minwax pre-treat to raise the grain, then sanded again and stained with water based Sangria Red. After that, I applied 10 spray coats of Deft semi-gloss clear lacquer followed by wet sanding and buffing with 0000 steel wool.
I cleaned all the chrome up and decided to add a used vintage "banana rail" mount and wood hoops to the bass drum (via eBay). I combined the vintage rail mount with a modern rim suspension mount to make a hybrid mount for the 13" tom. The suspension mount allows for more resonance from the tom shell. I also had a local trophy shop make up a custom plaque to cover the existing holes in the bass drum where the original Pearl mount bracket was. The end result is (IMO) a very nice, vintage looking drum set that sounds fantastic. I get tons of complements when we gig, and other drummers cant believe that it all started as a bottom-of-the-barrel, el-cheapo Taiwan imported kit made from junk Luan wood. In many ways, its ALOT like a Festiva.
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