'66 drums normally used a bat muffler. They were using round knob mufflers on marching drums at the time. And you could special order them on drums as well. So it's possible. The wires that you mentioned were probably the 2517124 wires which are Ludwig original wires. The usually sound great unless they are bent or stretched out excessively.

Beautiful drum by the way!

According to the Ludwig serial number chart- Somewhere between November-March 1966-67But then again i might be reading it wrong ?? :D Here is my serial#- 414697

it's hard to know why the badge was removed. My oyster blue pearl Ludwig kit was missing all its badges but the wrap was all original. At some point somebody must've thought the badges had more value than the kit. It now has approximately correct KS badges installed.Like Mike, I'm a fan of the original plastic end wires if they aren't too badly stretched

I also have an oyster blue pearl Ludwig kit, but all the badges are there! Weird what people will do sometimes...I've only ever seen those plastic end wires on drums I've bought that have seen better days, and the wires look like they've been chewed by something or someone, so I guess I need to try some new ones. I like the size of them, do you think these would've been originally fitted to new Downbeats back then?

According to the Ludwig serial number chart- Somewhere between November-March 1966-67But then again i might be reading it wrong ?? :D Here is my serial#- 414697

I read it as '66, but maybe I'm doing something wrong also. Where are you getting the months from?I only asked the question because of the baseball bat muffler - I thought if yours is the same year as mine, or a bit earlier, then mine should have the baseball bat as well, which it doesn't. Of course Mike stepped in with a huge possibility that it could well have been a special factory order. Thanks though.

Very nice looking drum. That would go well with my WMP Jazzette. :DThe Gier publication on date stamps and serial numbers has both of your serial numbers as most likely 1966. The Gier analysis is a superset of all the other data which has been published plus lots of further data, plus it corrects oversimplifications which have been spotted in earlier interpretations. It also says quite correctly that although there is a strong correlation of serial numbers with years in the aggregate (over 1,063 drums with both serial numbers and date stamps) this doesn't mean you can reliably say that a particular drum with a serial number was assembled in a particular month or two. The variability is too great to make that assessment reliably. And if you were using the data from this link:http://www.vintagedrumguide.com/serial_numbers.htmlit does not reflect all the work which has been done in the last few years. We've moved on. It is possible that the badge was put on crooked and that bugged somebody so much that they cut the grommet so they could rotate it. But even if we had a date stamp as an independent source of information, we wouldn't know why the grommet was breached.

I read it as '66, but maybe I'm doing something wrong also. Where are you getting the months from?I only asked the question because of the baseball bat muffler - I thought if yours is the same year as mine, or a bit earlier, then mine should have the baseball bat as well, which it doesn't. Of course Mike stepped in with a huge possibility that it could well have been a special factory order. Thanks though.

Yeah, the wires are probably original. I don't think they are available new so they are usually pretty well used when you see them. But they still work well even if a bit old and used.What I was alluding to before about my missing badges is that without a date stamp and with a round muffler it's possible that the badge is not the one that originally came on the drum. It's hard to know for sure of course but the badge was removed for some reason and it may have been that back when the drum had a lower value the badge was pinched for something else and a replacement fitted at some point down the track. Either way, like my kit, it's a lovely drum