Found this Baxter marked vintage Japan.. doesn't seem too common.

Thanks Jim That is the logo for sure. The ones I am seeing are a cheaper painted badge just black and silver.

My first kit was a set of Baxter drums in a lovely wine red. I bought 'em brand new back in 1992, in --you guessed it --Ontario. (Oakville, to be exact.) Mine had the same cheap badges you mention in your post. I've never seen or heard of any Baxter drums aside from the set I bought. Interesting to know you've seen them around!

They'll always have a place in my heart as my first drum kit, but to be honest, the shells weren't very good -- they were your bog-standard cheap imported luan shells, without the cool vintage vibe you get from the 60s Japanese stencils. Hard to tune; unpleasant tone. I remember seeing ads for RIMS mounts at the time, promising more resonance, and wondering why anyone would want their drums to resonate more when all I wanted was to minimize the awful resonance coming from my drums. :) After a year or so, I outgrew them and traded up to a Swingstar kit. A year after that, my parents spotted a dirt-cheap Gretsch kit in the local classifieds. I sold my Tama kit to scrape together the money and never looked back.

That said, those Baxter drums did have surprisingly good bass spurs, the tom arms and lugs were pretty sturdy, and the wine red finish was actually pretty nice. I'm glad I started out on them... it's amazing how much you learn from trying to pull good sounds out of difficult shells. And they made me appreciate my Gretsch kit all the more when it finally came along.

Oddly enough, I got the chance to play that Baxter kit one last time a couple of years after I sold it. I was playing a gig at my high school, and one of the other bands was bringing the communal drum set. I showed up for the gig and saw my old kit under the lights. It still looked great, and it actually sounded pretty good with the mics on it. Good memories.

Yea, I live in Barrie (hour outside Toronto) and my first set was a black baxter set, but it was REALLY old. The set was dug out of an abandoned barn in northern Ontario and I got to keep em, they were really crappy sounding and in absolutely horrible condition but every drummer falls in love with his first set :P. ended up selling them to a drum restorer a couple months back for $40.

The hardware or tom mounts look a lot like the swivo pearl copies from the 70's

I thought we settled this question about who "made" these drums. the badge, although it says "Baxter", the shape of the badge clearl tells the story. This badge shape is an "H", for Hoshino. There is still no definative answer as to which company this Hoshino is, this is the company that made the drums. I am still trying to get to the bottom of it.

Hi everybody.

New guy "BBL" in Helsinki here.

My first set was a Baxter set, this one in a greyish silver-striped finish. Got it used and cheap in Helsinki Finland in 1980.

I also wondered about this brand, as I had never seen any other Baxters, but I remember having seen a red orphan Baxter floor-tom somewhere later. True, that the hardware wasn't much to go by: hard to tune, but this set appeared to have been water-damaged. The 16" tom, though not damaged, wouldn't gladly accept most drum-head brands without pressing the head hard into position before screwing on the rim.

Well, Finland shares the same latitudes and weathers as Canada anyway.

In this case of Baxter the toms would be attached differently than in your picture. A plastic "ball" squeezed between "clippers" (sorry about not knowing the correct words) and the metal bar onto which the toms would fit, were "six-angled". The toms kept falling down, so when i later got a separate set of four Pealrl toms, I bought Pearls fitting for toms onto the bass-drum too. A vintage Yamaha snare etc, etc, so at the end a fabulously mixed-brand set. Eventually only the 16" tom remaining from the original Baxters, now with a vintage Premier bass-drum. Also switched from cheap Paiste cymbals to vintage Ziljians made in Turkey, xcept för the rides. Adding Bosphorus and Sabian to the grand mix.

The vintage Zildjans however, which I got in the early 90's were brand new unused. Asking about this surprising find, they said that these Ziljans had been sold out from Paiste's stores, at which they had used the for comparison earlier on.

One 18" Zildjan fell off the stage one time (and missed the bassplayer's foot by an inch) and hit the concrete floor, cymbal's edge first, which cracked horizontally along the edge. A friend managed to evenly cut off about a centimeter around this cymbal, and smoothened the edges. The 18" so became a 17", and this piece's sound didn't change much at all. Still works fine, though playing it also quite hard for more than 10 years. This would say something about the quality of these vintage Zildjian made in Turkey.

Does anyone know the value of Zildjians made in Turkey?

Got three of them, two 18" (one now 17") and one 16".

Someone said they might be 1960's stuff, but I'm not sure exactly when production moved to USA.

Regards, BBL ---

BBL,

W e l c o m e to the forum, and thanks for the cool story on the evolution of your drums. I'm not sure when production of Zildjians in Turkey ceased, but someone on here will know.

Glad to have you here.

Best

I have a set of Baxters now thanks to member and friend Human 71 and they sound as good as any MIJ kit with the killer red diamond pearl wrap.

Thanks dude. Good heads are everything.....