My Slingerland Kit

I bought this lovely kit in the summer of last year for £600. Apparently it was owned by the drummer from Hermans Hermitts. Although it had a lovely sound, the hardware wasn't great and the rack tom moved all over. I paid an excellent drum restorer to replace all the hardware, lugs, mounts etc (which might be sacrilige to some, but I like to play my drum kits, not just treat them as a museum piece!). I asked him to choose vintage looking fittings and I think he's done an excellent job. The restorer dated it to 1967 or 1968.

I also had a music stand mounted onto the bass drum which you can see in some of the pictures, this is ideal for setlists or drum notation. The idea for it came from Max Weinberg (Bruce Springsteens drummer), who has a digital appliance of some sort mounted to his, so it's been nicknamed 'The Weinberg Stand.'

Finally, the snare is a Premier Popular Snare, which I bought a few years back for about £80 from ebay. The seller claimed it was made in 1926, again it's hard to date it exactly but the logo definitely predates the Premier Logo of the 1930's.

Apologies for the quality of some of the pictures.
 

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Very nice kit, really.

Concerning replacing hardware on vintage kits: I think it depends from the kit and from its age. I would probably never replace anything in a 1930 kit, but I would certainly do it on a perfectly playable 1968 kit! I agree with you: kits are done to be played, and sometimes the sixties and even seventies hardware simply does not offer acceptable features and quality.

My first professional set was also a Slingerland I bought in 1976 (I guess it was built a couple of years earlier - still own the snare): part of the hardware was really bad, and in particular the lug casing were really weak. The tom holder began to show some problems quite quickly, so I perfectly understand you wanted to replace it on your kit. By the way: the work on your kit seems to have been done extremely well, and the chosen replacement parts perfectly fit the character of the set.
 
Beautiful job of taking a vintage kit, and making it a modern daily driver.​
 
Thankyou.

sacco-yes, if it was a really old vintage kit I'd have it cleaned and polished etc but woudn't have touched the original features.

Maybe the biggest problem for me with the old fittings was the bass drum lugs, which could be turned by hand. That's great in some situations, but when I put the bass drum into it's case, a few of them always got knocked so straight away it's out of tune.

It's now really easy to set up at a gig, usually takes me no more than 9 minutes from opening the cases to playing them.

I forgot to mention, one of the previous owners stuck a "Buddy's Place" sticker onto the bass drum so I've left that on it too.
 
Nice find,
I have no problem with installing hardware on an old kit to make it playable for your needs.
I had a circa 67 Slingerland kit and I remember that the hardware of the day was a bit disappointing. The tom mount would slip on the rail, the floor tom legs would slip, wobble. and hit the reso hoop. The bass drum cymbal mount would slip. Internal mufflers that would rattle.
The bottom line is that if you had left the kit in original form you wouldn't enjoy playing it as much as I'm sure that you do now.
Enjoy
 
That's a very nice kit, I love white marine pearl. The mount on your rack tom is much more serviceable than the original. There's a little drum shop not far from me that has a four piece late 60's Slingerland kit in white marine pearl that's calling my name, lol.

Dennis
 
I really like your drums and what you did to them. I agree that drums should be played, and much of the vintage hardware is not too good. Peace and goodwill.
 
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