Josh. I play vintage guitars and bass als You are correct about the cleaning the patina on the metal parts on either a guitar or bass. In the drum world two camps exist the purist, They will do mechanical maintenance to aide the operation of the instrument, The 2nd camp will clean and polish to make the drum as factory fresh as possible.

Ah, so there ARE two camps here, too. I'm of two minds here as I mentioned. The Leedy really wouldn't take too much effort to clean it up nicely as far as the metal goes. Since I intend to keep it at home, I think I will polish it up. Given the time and expense of gathering the rest of the hardware for the Ludwig kit, though, I may do a "deep cleaning" and mechanical service and see just how good they can get. Then again, the deeply yellowed covering (looks just like the Leedy) on them sort of pushes me to do as I do with my main Ludwigs. I keep them in good working order, but not "factory fresh".

Josh

(torn)