Ah ha. The plot thickens. :confused:

No B or BR stamped by the muffler control?

Rob Cook talks about there being a few of these with cut down blue olive badges from the early 1970s. The blue olive badge had to be cut down because the vent hole was drilled at a level for the keystone badge and a full blue olive badge (with space for the serial number) would bump into the bead.

But I've not heard of an old pre serial shell with pre serial badge and crimped snare beds which wasn't factory assembled until years later. But...the closer you look the more oddities you find.

Yeah, I suppose the muffler could have been replaced with a later model....weird

O-lugs, do you know if the hole pattern is the same for the small knob (pre baseball bat) muffler controls and the large ones? I've got a 1959 small knob and a 1969 large knob but I don't feel like taking the drums apart enough to get an accurate measurement of the hole placement. Maybe I could do it just from the outside...or maybe Rob Cooks book will tell me...