If I were to take a guess, that tom mount appears to be some sort of ball cast bearing caster turned upside down with some l-arms welded to them and mounted to a slab of aluminum(?) and held to it with some machine bolts and then that assembly is hex bolted to the tube, somehow. I'd say someone who has a few machine shop skills was having a creative moment.

That tom almost looks like MIJ...at least the mount plate...and those lugs look an awful lot like my Star lugs, and so does the snare lug I can barely make out in the back of the tom.

I've verified they are definitely Slingerland. That's not an issue. It's the strange and unusual choice of mounts that is really bugging me. I've looked it over for an extended length of time and can only come to one logical conclussion; I don't know what it is.

I thought that maybe it was some freakish Rogers thing at first. Then I thought MIJ. But the engineering is just too extreme. Then I thought European. That would account for the very passionate devotion to stability. Now I'm thinking homemade. I don't know. I could get it relatively cheap, but not cheap enough to compensate for that monstrosity. I could remount the diamond plate, but I'm not 100% the holes would be covered. I could even pull that tom pole out and put in a cymbal pole.

Man, that is a very sad discovery.

The fade is pretty extreme on this one. I'm told that the other one is not like this. Those pics should be here within two days.

Well, if cheap enough, why not? The mounts are relative to the sound....if they are cool enough for a project to get into the hands of a younger drummer, and he can afford a rquality set from a master of disaster....rescue, it could be one of those blessing things...like the champ sparkle I did last year. Played into my hands rather well, the kid is doing well, and I have a good friend and he gets cool gear for labor. Lop-sided on his side, because he gets it all for mowing my yard every now and then. You know how my mini-brain works...cheap is as cheap does, and if they are real Sling shells at a real savings, can ytou really go wrong? A student that could only otherwise afford a Chinese kit might like to have them if you take him/her under your wing and show them the ropes of rescue and consevation....

Just a thought froma warped mind, a drumaholic...

That finish is super rare. There are a lot of folks that call incorrectly certain versions of Slingerland's blue sparkle aqua sparkle.

Another long term Slingerland collector and myself have only seen one snare in that finish, and it was at the chicago show a few years ago.

(My friend bought it.)

That being said, the added weird tom mount might be a deal breaker for me...

I'm guessing this one will be a version of blue sparkle, but it still sounds like a nice set. According to the Dr's excellent article on this site, aqua wasn't available when they had those badges, but the aqua looking blue was...

http://www.vintagedrumguide.com/drcjw/article_4_finishes16.htm