I tried to include some photos in my post but got hung up. Hopefully this will work!

WFL Ludwig (Trans stamp) snare..

Could be a jazz fest or a Buddy Rich super classic..

3ply mahogany with rerings..

Great snare...

Hey neighbor -

Has to be a JF as a Super Classic has a different strainer. Finish more than likely custom; nothing in the catalog pages that I saw - perhaps blue without the duco???

It looks to be in very fine condition,

Chris

The 60 catalog calls those Jazz Festivals and the prior catalog called them Barrett Deems snares. The solid blue paint would be considered a solid duco color. Solid blue is a very uncommon color to find. Most likely maple exterior for the paint,poplar center and mahogany interior. Nice!

Mike

+1 with mike here. the rims are brass !

Duco was the brand of (DuPont) fast drying lacquer they used and you could special order any color you wanted by sending a sample to Ludwig (one assumes they took the sample down to the local auto paint store and got a pint mixed up). They did do a blue and silver or gold two tones quite a bit at that time, as well as blue hoops for blue sparkle bass drums. This looks like the same blue so someone probably just requested a solid blue drum. The lacquered drums had a maple outer ply to give a smoother surface for the paint. The part about special ordering colors is buried in some fine print in the catalog, there isn't a color chart anywhere for standard lacquer colors beyond the sets illustrated in lacquer.

As Mike mentioned that was right on the cusp of the model changing names but the '59 catalog (called "catalog 60" but copyrighted 1959) does call it a Jazz Festival.

Fascinating! I've been puzzled by this for a couple of years since I acquired it and am really glad I ended up here. So friendly and helpful - thank you, guys.

I did some research on the Barrett Deems too and the shell depth is 5.5" on that particular model. As this is 5", that does indeed point to it being a Jazz Festival. Interesting to learn that the solid blue is custom and that totally explains why I didn't see it in the online catalog images. By the way, Barrett Deems = badass mofo. What a monster.

It's clean as a whistle save for 2 very small chips in the paint and a small scratch in the same area. Any idea on it's value? I'm a bass player and have no business having a cool piece like this.

Some Jazz Festivals have 5.5" deep shells (Ringo's for example). It seems that either the workers didn't pay that close of attention to what shell they were grabbing to build a drum or maybe they figured anything between 5" and 5.5" was close enough. A lot of Jazz fest shells seem to fall somewhere between the two with 5.25" or other oddball depths. Ludwig's output was full of minor discrepancies. Keeps things interesting.

Value is hard to judge. It's rare to see a color like that so that should pull the price up...then again not many folks are looking for a snare that color to complete a set (since there probably aren't too many sets like that) so the demand may be low and pull the price down. I'd guestimate it's about a $300-400 drum but you never know. If no one's looking for something like that it might be a $200 drum...or if 2-3 guys "have to have it" for their collection ( or they do have matching sets to complete) who knows? Take all that with a grain of salt as I never sell drums (but I do buy quite a few) so I don't exactly have my finger on the pulse of the current market.

KO, thank you for the straight-up honest response. I'm a big user/collector of old tube bass and PA amplifiers and to a degree, it's the same thing. I love vintage gear of all sorts and took this drum as payment for services rendered (I design/build/repair electric guitar and bass pickups as my dayjob), realized that it had value and said "yeah, ok" ...but it just sits there in my closet. It deserves a better life than that - someone that will use and appreciate it.

That said, I started my professional music career on drums with a '63 Pearl kit: 4 piece blue sparkle with a 20" kick and a really great sounding 6 lug snare - still have it, including the original cymbal stands!

I love drums. I love playing drums. But at the same time, a real musician knows his/her place. Owning a classic snare like this is wasted on me.

Thank you again to all of you.