Thought I'd share my latest purchase. It's a 14x28" Leedy bass drum. When I bought it there were multiple layers of paint on it. After stripping the paint off I was pleased to see such a beautiful shell. One ply Mahogany and the whole thing is feather light. Great sounding bass drum too. When I was cleaning it up I noticed a faint name, date, and city written in pencil inside the shell. It read" Ray Weisbrod, May 19, 1914, Terre Haute, Ind." For giggles I thought I'd do a quick web search. Turns out he was a percussionist with the Ringling Brothers circus and the Barnum and Bailey circus at about that time (before the two circuses merged). Even found a picture of him and a picture of his business card with all his percussion goodies on display. It's interesting for me to imagine this old drum traveling with the circus so long ago.
I've currently got this set up with some Yamaha toms that I think look nice with it. Snare is another Leedy from about the same time period that when muffled right sounds exactly like Levon Helm's early snare recordings which was my whole reason for grabbing up these old gals. Still hunting around for some toms from the same era but couldn't resist setting it up to play now.
Steve
