Vintage Premier restoration-ish

drummyjosh

Junior Member
Hi guys,
Sorry in advance that my writing is pretty crap but I thought I would give this a go.

A couple of years ago I was give a vintage premier kit by a guy who owns a rehearsal studio. It was quite a nice sounding kit, but was in dire need of new heads. I used it for a while but couldn't get used to the huge 14" tom i was using as my rack tom.

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So luckily one day I was rummaging around the spare stuff at the studio and found a matching 10" tom. I asked if i could swap it with him for the 16" tom and sure enough he agreed. Now I was really happy with the set. As I like to have quite a tight set up, the small 10" and 14" toms worked perfect.

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After a while of using it I decide I wanted to make it look a bit better, which is what I am still doing at the moment. First thing I did was to give it a new paint job. I removed the old scratched and worn wrap and found a lovely black stain underneath. Unfortunately though the ridiculously sticky wrap pulled a lot of it off so this was unusable. At this point I also noticed that the bass drum used to be a 10 lug and had been changed to a 8 lug. Who ever owned this kit before me really butchered it. Once I sanded it down I decided to spray it matte black. The result looked like this.

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This is what I have at the moment, and to be fair, I am happy with how it looks. Also, now it has been completely re-skined, It sounds really nice. However I wanna do some more, so I mocked an image up quickly in Photoshop to see how it would look with some new details.

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As you can see, I am planning to add new bass drum spurs, the logo, maybe a holz, some premier badge decals and the floor tom needs a new bracket. Other things I wanna do is buy some more lugs and claws and turn the bass drum back into a 10 lug. I may also buy some gauger mounts, for the toms. I think this would greatly improve the sound as the brackets are currently attached straight to the shell which is chocking the sound of the drums.

So let me know what you think, any ideas/ opinions on what I could do improve the kit.
 
Nice job - it looks good.

I played a set with 13 and 14" toms that were about that deep (like in the first pic), mounted on the bass drum - LOL. So I fell your pain and joy. I'm very pleased with the smaller sizes I've got now.

I think the bass drum spur idea is great. Your mock-up looks a lot better to me. I just like straight spurs though.
I'm not sure going back to 10 lugs would be worth the effort though, unless you'd be doing it just because you like the look better. 8 lugs is plenty to hold a tuning.


.
 
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Personally I would make the port hole perimeter black. I think that would look much sharper. I highly recommend those Gauger RIMS suspension mounts for both toms - just make sure everything will fit. I tried to use an imitation mount (Gibraltar I think) on one of my vintage Premier toms, and the side plate did not fit my Premier tom bracket, and the band itself did not realy fit my drum. Adam, I think his name is, at Gauger, is extremely helpful and will make sure any of your questions are answered.
 
i dont know what to improve, but the kit looks awesome :) any sooundclips?

Thanks man! Here is some sound clips. One from a recent recording session and a video from band practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4UAfC8eoaE
https://soundcloud.com/joshstockwin/drum-test

Nice job - it looks good.

I played a set with 13 and 14" toms that were about that deep, mounted on the bass drum - LOL. So I fell your pain and joy. I'm very pleased with the smaller sizes I've got now.

I think the bass drum spur idea is great. Your mock-up looks a lot better to me. I just like straight spurs though.
I'm not sure going back to 10 lugs would be worth the effort though, unless you'd be doing it just because you like the look better. 8 lugs is plenty to hold a tuning.

Thanks!
I think the 10 lugs will look better. But mainly because that's what it was originally. All the holes are there so it would just be a case of buying some more lugs and filling in the newer holes. I dunno what the guy who had it before me was thinking when he messed with this kit. I also believe that it was originally a resonator and that the inner shell was taken out. I'm not too sure on that but it's the only kit I can find with the same lugs.

Personally I would make the port hole perimeter black. I think that would look much sharper. I highly recommend those Gauger RIMS suspension mounts for both toms - just make sure everything will fit. I tried to use an imitation mount (Gibraltar I think) on one of my vintage Premier toms, and the side plate did not fit my Premier tom bracket, and the band itself did not realy fit my drum. Adam, I think his name is, at Gauger, is extremely helpful and will make sure any of your questions are answered.

Cheers,
As for the black hole, I alread brought the chrome one. I bloody love chrome :p
I was going to get Guager mounts as they are the only place that I could find that do a 5 lug 10" mount. I will definitely get in touch before I buy them but as far as I am aware they are quite adjustable?
 
...I think the 10 lugs will look better. But mainly because that's what it was originally. All the holes are there so it would just be a case of buying some more lugs and filling in the newer holes. I dunno what the guy who had it before me was thinking when he messed with this kit....


Ya - that seems a little strange. But if the holes are already there, might as well go for it.
 
Here is some Pics of what I did the weekend:

New Spurs, logo and Bass drum O.
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New badges
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Also, if any one is interested, I got a new Evans level 360 G1 head for my snare. Haven't had a chance to properly try it out yet but there was definitely a noticeable improvement in sound and tuning range when I was tuning it up. Ill post some set up pics next weekend after band practice.
 
Here's some more pics of what I did over the weekend.

New bracket, air vents and badges:
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Overall kit:
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I think its looking good now. Next thing to do is turn it back to a 10 lug bass drum. Got the extra lugs, just waiting to get some money for some extra claws. I'm gonna tidy up some of the filler work I did too and give the bass drum a fresh spray of paint.
 
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Josh, just for info: One of your posts was moderated by the Drummerworld system (automatically), displaying that post as possible spam. So I had to approve that post to have it being displayed in the thread. That's for the confusion why your post didn't come up at first when you submitted it...
 
Some pics from my visit to Aberystwyth the other day:

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And one from the gig I played with my band there:

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Gonna be doing some more work on the drums and buy some new things over the coming weeks. If any one is actually interested I will keep posting in this.
 
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