WARNING: It's a long story...
Dear fellow drummers & Slingerland fans:
I thought you’d like to see these drums and maybe enjoy hearing the story behind them. I know I’d like to hear your feedback and comments. Start off by imagining if this kit had been listed recently on eBay; there might be a few questions and head scratching over it. What you see is a set of maple Slingerlands with Niles badges in the following sizes: 20” bass, 12x8 & 9x13” rack toms with 14x14’ and 16X16” floor toms and a Buddy Rich COB snare with the TDR strainer. The serial numbers are as follows: Bass drum: 266629, 12” tom: 403893, 13” tom: 403891, 14” tom: 403894, 16” tom: 403895, snare: 495994. There is no set like it listed in the catalogs of that era and the strange part is the shells on the bass drum and floor toms are standard 5-ply but the rack toms are 9-ply…What gives?
Fortunately, I can answer some of those questions as I am the original owner of these drums. I purchased them on special order back in December 1976 and basically it’s a 50N model with the following upgrades and/or changes: Super Set-o-matic holder, Buddy Rich snare, 20” bass drum and an extra 14” floor tom. You might be amused to hear how the company rep gave me this story about some new shells they were offering called “pro shells” that were available for a small extra charge. I can still see him putting his hands up as if he were caressing a beach ball as he described how the shells were glued up under pressure and heat. In my as yet not fully-developed brain I said to myself: “no rings – must be strong, heavy - that's good, pro shell - Buddy must play these…me likey!” When other people would comment on how they sounded I would say: “well, that’s because they’re special order drums with special shells – not many people have them!”
...when the snickering stops I’ll continue….
But why are the plies on the rack toms different and what about the jump in serial numbers? Well, as everyone knows, a lot of American manufacturers in the late 70’s were cutting corners and Slingerland was no exception. For example, the original snare that came with the kit had a dent in it. That and the hardware in particular, had so many issues that I even sent a letter to Don Osborne about it and got a reply back from Larry Linkin (the copy of the letter wouldn't upload or you could see his response). It was sometime after that when I discovered that the bearing edges on all of the tom shells were not true so I sent every one back to Slingerland demanding that they either fix the edges or send me replacements (luckily for me, Slingerland offered a 5 year warranty). This was in 1979. They sent me replacement shells and the bearing edges are as precise as any you'll ever see. Whether they were made by Slingerland or came from someone else I have no idea, but you can see for yourselves the difference in the new shells compared to the original bass drum shell in the pictures below. Since I had some weather checking with whatever finish they originally put on the drums, I decided to have the whole kit redone with polyurethane varnish before I put everything back together (6 coats sprayed with fine wet sanding between each coat and a final rubbing of pumice and rottenstone followed by carnuba wax). They tended to get hazy after a while so I took the wax off and used burnishing cream to bring the shine back to what you see in the photos. I thought the chrome inlay on the bass drums hoops looked cheesy so I left it off when they were redone.
That, boys and girls, is the story of how this particular kit came to be. I hope it wasn’t too long or boring. I love these babies and to me they sound as good as they look.
