Greetings, these would be a Star stencil of some description, based on the bass T-rods and the King Stone cymbals. Nice kit, and the gold sparkle has aged nicely to an orange evenly across the shells. Most of these, with this hardware, are called "Crown", but no one knows for sure what name would be on them. I have a similar kit in WMP, the same hardware, the cymbal mount is one of the keys to this kit. Star would have put this kit out early 60s. Later on, the stencil name would go to Pearl, but this is an early 60s therefore it is a Star. (later to become the company we know today as TAMA)

Furthermore, I do not think the snare is original to the kit.

couple more pics.

the original owner stuck a lamp in one of the bass spur holes, looks neat.

Oh yea, the toms have 6 lugs on each head, the snare has 8.

I think I'm in a time warp. Your kit looks like a near exact copy of the set I grew up playing. Same color, every nut and bolt. I beat the living crap out of that thing for 10+ years then sold it at a garage sale for next to nothing (in the late 80s). Great find.

jim

If you want to do this kit right, a full restoration and preservation, I will give you the top down deal on how to keep these for the next 2 or 3 generations to enjoy. It is easy, yet a bit of a pain. Worth it in terms of money? No. But in terms of what these old thin shell drums can do, what potential they have in terms of deep tone and mojo that is rapidly disappearing from the music scene? Absolutely a resounding yes.

Nothing you can buy new today has anything close to the tone of these old MIJ drums, and if you run the right heads, they will roll your eyes back into a longing for another era that no one else can imagine until you play them out. You can get your local drum store to order Aquarian Z-100 coated heads for all of you drums and they will simply blow your mind in the way they match these old shells. Roy Burns made a decision to come up with heads for all of retro drummers and this is one of the fold.

They are specifically designed for older ply shells. His aim was for the mahogany/poplar/mahogany shells of the Ludwig and Leedy era drums, but they happened to fit really well with these MIJ shells to boot.

I know this from a phone conversation I had with Mr. Burns regarding these heads and the respective drums he desired to match them to. The MIJ were a by-product, not really a forethought, as no one really thinks about these drums as viable, until recently, but it has worked out to be the case. When Mr. Burns called me, we discussed the reasons for the heads thickness and "supple" feel. It was purely designed for these vintage drums, not todays modern shells, although they work well on the 4, 5 and 6 ply shells of Keller design for todays' drummer.

Jonni...What heads would you recommend for the bottoms of the toms?

I highly suggest the Aquarian Z-100 for all your batters, except the bass, and that I am running an Evans EQ-1 If you like a coated on the bass, then a 22" Z-100 will go right in with the rest.

Cheap, like more of the Z-100 or even an Attack pack, clear for a total kit is like 40-50 bucks delivered to your door. See American Musical and zZounds. The zZounds site will actually sell them to you cheaper than AMS because of their best price guarantee.

AMS: http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-ATT-DHAPACKB

zZounds:http://www.zzounds.com/item--ATTDHAPACKB

If you notice, the zZounds site is offering to beat anyone else's advertised price. They do it by lowering the shipping rate. You just open both pages and call zZounds and they will beat the AMS deal

They offer other sizes, this is just the most popular pack. I would not use them for batters as they just don't sound all that great, to my ears. Terry Bozio endorses them, so you can get some idea what they are all about.

At the moment I'm just gonna clean/polish everything, and put some Ambassadors on and play them for a while. Looking at the hardware, nothing has ever been removed from the shells, so the sanding/lacquering will wait a while. I'm more excited about putting heads on them, tuning them, and rockin them out. And these will be my new gigging kit, at least for the smaller places...my Big Beats are getting heavy! Plus my first kit in the 90s was a 64 Club Date in Gold Sparkle, so I can't wait to sit behind "little" gold drums again!

But I'll eventually do a proper on them

I'm thinking that this is Pearl made set. I can at least say that this is the matching snare to the set. Take a look at the pics below. This is my Jazz Master snare and rack tom. The tom mount is the same as your set. The t-rods are the same as well. It's my opinion that these are some of the earliest Pearl stencils imported in the early-mid 60s.