No sir, these are COS. Steel shells, no wood, at least they shouldn't be. Even if they are COW, if the wood is in good condition, they will still have a great sound. With MIJ, it is knowing how to work over the shells, more than anything else, that makes them sound better. I am a restoration tech and I can walk you through any work you would like to perform. Now, getting scratches out is not going to be something we could do as it is chrome, not stainless steel. Star also had a kit featuring these shells. Man, if you can get them...are they scratched up really bad? Could you post the pix you do have? This is a rare find indeed!

I picked up the Starfinder kit this evening. It is like the

picture in the catalog. The shells are metal and the lugs

are a Ludwig knock off. Each drum has the Apollo badges.

It even came with the allen wrench set for the legs and mount.

I will post pictures as soon as I get the time.

T-Rod

Very good! Did the snare come with, and is it really a 12"? The cat states it is a 5x12 and I was curious if it is the case or if it is a misprint.

No snare drum with the kit. Hopefully I can post pictures

later this evening.

The good news is you can find a nice, clean Star built COS snare on the bay for 10.00 up to around 40.00. Not likely that you will find the match in any sort of time frame, you will look for it for awhile. But to match it to an era correct one will be something you can find in like a few weeks. And, as a bonus, if you already own Supra, it will "match" the catalog, and sound better. Several of us us have various year models of the Star COS snares and we each have them set up differently and all of them sound fantastic. Not quite as good as the late 60s-early 70s Pearl COS snares, but close.

Anyway, if you start watching ebay and want my advice on anything that comes up, I will be more than happy to assist. Mine was a fluke. It is a model 8356 8 lugger that was filthy, in my favor. I got it like 20.00 shipped. Once I cleaned it up I found it to be immaculate, like someone took a few hours of lessons and put it away in the closet for 35 years.

There were several incarnations of these COS snares, and all of them are good to superior in performance. Here are some of the better quality snares from the same era as your COS kit. However, finding the one with matching lugs to the catalog is going to be your "Holy Grail" on this kit because Ludwig was vigilant on protecting their designs and sued Star and Pearl regularly to stop them from this sort of design rip-off. Gretsch and Rogers less so, and Bud Slingerland was notoriously a tightwad and likely viewed this as a form of flattery, at least publicly.

http://www.tamadrum.co.jp/anniversary/expansion.php?cat_id=8&now=13

Here are the pictures I promised of the Starfinder.

[COLOR="DarkGreen"]Awe Man!!! Jealous! Those are time-capsule-clean my friend. It doesn't get better than this. How do they sound? And how did he manage to keep them so nice? And, if you don't mind sharing....how much? Finding the matching snare will be the fun part, and likely will take some patience, unless you are blessed and it pops up next week all nasty dirty and not a scratch under the grime. That would be the luck some people have, I just happened to get the good deal on my snare because it was filthy and I guess because of that fact it really looked like it was beat to heck, when in fact it was just dirty and took nothing more than a heads off cleaning. I was certain when I first got it I would have to do a deep lugs off cleaning but after I got to it with the rag, all those years melted away like wax in a fire.[/COLOR]

They actually sound pretty good even with bad heads. The bass drum sounds worse than the toms but with a couple of felt strips it will probably sound pretty good too.

I don't think I will have it long enough to find a snare as the set will probably be sold to someone that wants it bad enough.

As for the purchase price I think I will keep that a secret for now.

T-Rod

I kind of envy you guys that can buy and sell this sort of thing. I can buy them but then can't bring myself to sell them. And i can catagorically say that I wouldn't be in a hurry to sell this kit - It's really nice.

Well now-these drums being so ridiculously rare and all,need some detailed photo documentation for the VDF MIJ section.A lot of those individual components look unique to this set,especially the tom mount system.Never seen the recievers with the raised x either.And the cymbal arm.....