So, I picked up this drum from last years Chicago Show. It was wearing Rogers hardware, and was wrapped in BDP. The shell is almost 6.5" deep, so I wanted to convert it to a Blaemire 402. Jerry and I had always talked about how sweet it would be to have an entire original Blaemire kit with Flat Imperial lugs, ala a Clubdate kit. The closest he came was building a Supersensitive with all Ludwig hardware, including flat Imperial lugs. It was always my favorite of his snare builds.
I built this drum as a tribute to my good friend. I have a couple J/M Blaemire green snares, but my original Blaemire snare developed a crack in the snare side of the shell, so I had been looking for a replacement. I finally found a set of flat Imperial lugs and had them chromed. Stripped the wrap, sanded the shell. I slightly widened the snare beds and finished off the shell with the same rattle can lacquer that Jerry always used. The only Rogers hardware I kept was the muffler, as it is a three hole application, didn't want any extra holes. There is some slight splay of the tension rods, doesn't really bug me. I may slightly altrer the hoops to address this, but it tunes up fine, and sounds great!
Thanks for the inspiration Jerry!
