I don't feel making hoops look more presentable, devalues a bass at all. Hoops seem to be the one part of a drum that is almost uncontroversial to paint, & fix up, ( as long as the original scheme is kept).

I painted mine after finding, through a little research here on the forum, that semi-gloss black is the correct color.

Lynn

Did you strip the existing paint first or just touch up?

I tried just touching up mine, but the original paint kept chipping and peeling. Stripped them down and repainted. It took multiple coats and repositioning to get full blended coverage but well worth the effort.

I had a lot of nicks and chips in the paint on mine, so I sanded them down. It didn't take a terribly long time to prepare them for painting. I posted details of the process with pictures in another thread and. I could PM you a link if you'd like.

Lynn

When I repaint any hoops, I like to use wood filler and sand 'em smooth before shooting any paint on them. If you're gonna go through the effort of stripping them down to paint them, might as well do the extra step with filler and make them a full restoration, right?

I think they used lacquer back in the day. Somewhere it was mentioned that the 'Ace hardware black lacquer' is a good choice. I've used it and it worked out well.

^^^ agreed. I use Rustoleum gloss black lacquer. It dries to a nice semi gloss finish and it's not too glossy which makes it a nice match to original. Bought it at Home Depot $6 a can. Did the 40's hoops last week and came out very nice.

Thanks for the tip on the lacquer, Till. Gonna try it out next time.