Your drums are definitely vintage. Stands, tom mount, bass drum spurs, all of this is from the 60's. I have a Hoshino kit from the 60's and it seems most of the hardware on your drums are identical to what is fitted on mine. I supect there are reinforcement rings inside your toms but not in your bass drum.

Later japanese drums usually didn't have any rings at all.

-Tune it pretty high and play some jazz, it's a cool little kit ;)

The badge reminds me extremely of 'Hoshino' - and I don't mean Hoshino (TAMA), but another company from the 70s, which was existing only for a certain time period and then disappeared again.

That company mixed several type of hardware parts together at their sets, so that some parts look like if the set was a Pearl's one, and others as if the set was coming from Star (the pre-TAMA company), the other major drum manufacturer in Japan.

Ralf

Ralf. Yes, the badges are almost identical. The former owner of my kit claims he bought it 1968. As far as I know Hoshino dissapeared mid 70's.

And, as you point out, Hoshino drums has nothing to do with Tama. Even if the word Hoshino ws used in Tamas company name as well.

These drums are not very well made, I guess they were real budget drums at the time.

Thanks for the help guys. I was thinking based on the hardware that they may be vintage. I read on another thread that some of these kits were made in the late 80's early 90's, but I'm guessing that the badge may have been different. It will be interesting to see what the cymbal is.

60's Japanese drums------not well made?-------how could this be? they used the finest recreation room panelling,chrome on pot metal hardware, undersized freads and saran wrap heads that the yen could by. sacrilege.

Hmm....Sacrilege ;)

I admit, I had to look that up.

-No, I'm not trying to be blasphemous and saying that all japanese drums from the 60's aren't well made.

I'm just referring to my Hoshino-kit. Bearing edges are pretty messy, reinforcement rings are badly crafted and made out of some very soft wood.

A couple of the tension rod inserts have snapped and the threads on some of the tension rods and bolts could look a lot better. I do admit, the crome looks very good. No pitting after more than forty years.

Of course the japanese built a lot of good drums....and poor drums. Some cheaper than others. I am convinced that my Hoshinos belong to the cheaper category -Budget drums. -They look very nice though, and they have a very cool jazzy sound. And, I do like them, budget or not ;)

/Johan

There must be a reason why Hoshino disappeared and Star, Pearl and Yamaha survived - no, wrong wording - better: stayed on being successful (!).

In my eyes Hoshino was just copying from the others (Japanese company copying from other Japanese companies: funny, isn't it?), they made no development (no own pedals, lug style etc.) on their own, and that was it.

I don't know, if that's true this way - just my :2Cents:

Ralf

Hey,

Does anyone have a few (3) of these "H Style" Hoshino badges? I have a 3 piece in need of that finishing touch. :)

-Thanks!!

There are so few of those kits left that you likely will be waiting a very long time to find just the badges. You likely will find a complete kit long before you'll ever find just parts off one of them. That particular "Hoshino brand did not last long, nor did they make a very big imprint on North American soil. Now, if you were in, say, Japan or Eastern Europe, you might have better luck, but not here.