Yep, it's probably a stencil kit, and you seem to have the general idea. I guess they're called stencil kits because the manufacturers (often Pearl or Star) would make kits and then "stencil" one of many brand names onto it.We've got at least one collector around here: Jonnistix is the forum's resident made-in-Japan guru. I'd say that most of us would consider them to be vintage, even if they're not "high end" vintage drums.I seem to recall the Dixie name being associated with Pearl. Post some pics and someone here will be able to tell you more about your drums.You'll need to resize the picture to shrink it down a bit. If you don't have Photoshop ($$$), there are plenty of free programs that can resize images. Irfanview is a popular image viewer than can also do basic image manipulating like resizing and converting to different file formats.
I'm with SkyDog75 on the description of a "stencil" musical instrument. Traditionaly the companies purchasing weren't looking for knock-offs and would select from the limited features the manufacturing company offered. So some purchasing companies ended up with the same features as other purchasing companies on the sets they would offer as their own.
Yes Sir
