FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Vintage Drum Kit

Question:
I decide to create this area for people needing help with vintage drum kits. I myself just purchased a vintage drum kit and can't seem to get any info from anybody, all everybody wants to know is if I am going to sell it and how much and if I don't want to sell it they don't want to talk to me. well, here's my kit: I recently purchased an old vintage Leedy drum kit from my local music shop. The previous owner had used a brush and painted them white with blue and yellow stripes. I stripped all the paint off the shells and finished them in a natural oak color. I did some research in a new book that came out entitled The Complete History of the Leedy Drum Company and it appears that the kit is an Improved Swingstar. The picture and description matches my kit to a tea except the numbers printed inside the shell don't match the catalog numbers from the book. However the color scheme (original bi color black and gold Lacquer), all the hardware (xl-bass drum pedal, cow bell, lugs, tension rods and sock cymbal stand) all match the picture and description from the book. I can't find any other kit in the book that even comes close to describing my kit. The badge is a square with rounded corners with half circle sticking out of the top and bottom with Leedy printed above the air hole and Elkhart Ind USA printed below it. the drums consist of: 14 7-lug tom 3910, 1140, 8 2840 13 6-lug tom 6-40, 10 340 1140 28 Bass drum 30-40, 40 -3 14 Snare (lost the numbers which were removed during re-finishing) The lugs appear to be beaver-tail streamlined self aligning rods. Does anybody have any info about this drum kit, or can anybody help me identify my drum kit?

Answer:
From the badge description, that's PROBABLY a 1940-42 kit. I'm looking at Rob Cook's drum badge timeline, which has many, but not all, badges on it. It's available from Rebeats Vintage Drum Products, P.O. Box 6, Alma, MI 48801. Rob does a lot of research in the vintage era; he wrote the Leedy book you mention, along with one called Leedy Drum Topics ( a compilation of Leedy's own newsletter from 1923-41). You might also check out THE NOT-SO-MODERN DRUMMER, published by John Aldridge, 3-A Third Street, Fair Haven, VT 05743. The back issues (available in compilations from Rob Cook, or from John directly) have a lot of useful articles in them. Those are the two main places to go to get info. Rob is bringing out a guide to vintage drums in book form, but I'm not sure how close he is to a release date. I play vintage Gretsches, myself. What he said. When I lived in Maryland I bought all my equipment there. There's another store in that area, whose name unfortunately escapes me at the moment, whose owner deals almost exclusively in used equipment. (Gene, perhaps you could look it up, if you've a yellow pages handy?)