Just one-ish more thing I guess... keep the original snares or no?

And finally, what should I use to clean the Supra shell?

Oooh, also... What is the typical wood composition of these drums?

Yes,keep/use original snare wires (if not bent).

PS........get new coated heads on the snare/tom tops ASAP...........

they will sound much better (to most people,anyway).

The snares seem to be in great condition. I will continue to use them, thanks!

As for heads, I am a little lost. I like how the toms sound, but I think they will be better with new heads. I guess I can just hold onto the vintage ones for collector's sake.

As for the snare, I LOVE how it sounds, and I don't want to risk losing that... but I also don't want to risk breaking the heads. Do they even make coated snare side heads any more?

Wood composition? Anyone? You have all been AMAZING thank you so much - don't drop out on me just yet though.

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Sweet, thank you all again. This has been very encouraging and informative!

I like it here...

Cool! And be sure to look around at all the pull down menus at the top of the forum -especially the Vintage Drum Guide. Here is a picture of a Big Beat drum set from the 1975 catalog for you to compare -different color, obviously, but the same configuration as what yours started out as..(I think....99% sure):

[IMG]http://www.vintagedrumguide.com/images/ludwig_sets/1975_ludwig_drumsets10.jpg[/IMG]

I would like to see a picture of all your original hardware package too. It should all be Atlas models by 1976. The hardware illustrated in the picture is not correct for Big Beat (as noted in the ad).

Hello all,

So sorry about my offlineyness.

This may not go over so well with all of you... but I actually sold the vintage hardware (cymbal stands, throne, and hi-hat stand) with my old drum kit. There's no way I was going to swap out my nice hardware just for collection sake, and I knew my set would only sell with a full set of hardware.

I can tell you that one of the cymbal stand's legs folded up and in, the other down and in. They had Ludwig written in very small script. The hi-hat stand said ludwig and Spurlock on it.

Hope I didn't make a huge mistake financially, but I like my newer hardware.

Peace.