Ludwig made a Jazzette model for quite a while, and the dimensions didn't change until 1980 when they went with a larger bass drum. As well, you could get a lacquer finish from 1967 (the first year they were made, I think) through at least 1973. So...how rare could they be? I mean, Ludwig's main consumer base wasn't jazz drummers, so they were likely never an ultra-popular kit. But if someone hadn't been buying them, Ludwig would've quit making them.When I think of something as "rare," I think about it in terms there never having been a lot of them to begin with. That's really not the case with the Jazzette. My guess is that people who own Jazzettes just don't sell them very often, and when they do, they don't sell them on Ebay. That doesn't make them rare. And no offense intended to anyone, but it sure doesn't make them worth $8,000.
No offense taken. It's just your opinion that it's not worth $8K. My opinion is that it is worth it.
Ludwig "offered" the Jazzette but that didn't mean they were rolling them off the assembly line. Distributors would order them (or not) and then the drums for the kits were pulled and assembled. Jazzettes did not get ordered very often for exactly the reason you describe -Ludwig wasn't the bop drummer's drum set. However, in order to be competitive, each of the "Big Four" manufacturers had to offer kits that covered the spectrum of needs for drummers.
You could be right, Maybe there are a bunch of perfect Jazzette kits sitting in collections. It is, however, interesting that, in over a decade of looking around for them and scouring the world wide web across the globe...drum discussion forums...thousands of drummers who know drummers, etc. I've only been able to find out about a handful of them. It sure seems like someone would have at least been talking about them. In my experience, though, there aren't even that many rumors about them! My feeling is that there aren't very many Jazzettes out there at all because very few were ever sold....even though the configuration was offered for quite awhile.
