Hoppy, ludwig has not and will not release the exact formula so that's all you'll ever get is supposition.. but it is mostly aluminum!

I'm curious as to why many think it has any aluminum at all?

because ludwig says that's what most of ludalloy is! and that's what an acrolite is made out of! the supra and the acro are essentially the same shell and drum!

Actually....Ludalloy....IS aluminum, they just won't say what grade of aluminum it is....Yes Sir

An excerpt from Paul William Schmidt's book: History of the Ludwig Drum Company, page 89: (btw, these are the words of Bill Ludwig II aka the Chief) "All of the shells in the early days were brass, which is easy to plate, polish, and buff. We changed to bronze in the mid-1970's because we felt the sound was superior to brass, but they have similar tonal characteristics.

Some of our shells were aluminum. When aluminum alloys grew in the industry's favor in the early 1960's we started to think in terms of low-end line of drums made of aluminim. Aluminum is malleable, light weight, and cheaper than brass or bronze. We still make the anodized aluminum-shell drum, with the snare bed formed in the shell and the batter side flanged over. The whole trade followed us."

Ludalloy was pretty much a marketing department term for the aluminum shells.

L-D thanks buddy, I just didn't feel like going into the explanation of it, thank you!

Good marketing !!

Bummer they never could consistently get the chrome to adhere properly.... my bud VTM2000 said he spoke to one of the higher ups in the company one day about that. I think the gist of it was that the acid bath cleaning prior to plating was the weak link in the process..... some inconsistencies arose there that weren't controlled very well.

Sumtin like that...........

OK... Now this is heatin' up.

..."When aluminum alloys grew in the industry's favor in the early 1960's we started to think in terms of low-end line of drums made of aluminim. Aluminum is malleable, light weight, and cheaper than brass or bronze. We still make the anodized aluminum-shell drum, with the snare bed formed in the shell and the batter side flanged over. The whole trade followed us."

Sounds like he is talking about their low end line here, and a material that is virtually all aluminum. Aluminum alloys typically have minimal amounts of alloying metals in the mix... Nothing about chroming. Aluminum is signifcantly lighter than copper/nickel/zinc or the alloy in combination. The denisty of Al is 2.7 and 8.9/8.9/7.14 for Cu/Ni/Zn; the atomic weight of Al is 26.9 and 65.5/58.7/65.3 for Cu/Ni/Zn.

I would also like pose the following. Why would you chrome plate aluminum, especially when it polishes so brilliantly? Ultimately you would have to polish both materials to acheive that lustrous look.

This is another whole can of worms......a can that I am NOT going to open....Toiletx-mas3

bawk...bawk...bawk....bAWKACK ;-)

Also, I'm curious if others have weighed their shells to see if the is a significant amount of weight difference in Ludaloy and other metal shells.

I posted mine in another thread. I hope Daivd is going gather the data so we can catalog this kind of info.