Hi Doug,
Your drum is an early 50s Autocrat, it has had a pre war John Grey snare mech fitted and an earlier tone control, it would of originally looked something like this:
Once you get it up and running I'm sure it will sound fab, 50s (and earlier) Autocrats are consistently well made and providing the mech has been fitted correctly (it does look like they did a pretty good job) it will sound great. The grooves in the rollers originally allowed closer contact but with modern snares and ribbons the wires can float above the head. If you have any issues with contact use snare string instead of snare bands, also you could thread the ribbon under the bar rather than over it.
The dips in the shell is called a snare bed and were made intentionally. A snare bed is a small recess on the resonant side of the snare drum shell. Most often snares with beds have less chance of your wires hanging, and you can have a "cleaner" sound/response from the drum itself.
Make sure you seat the heads centrally as these 50s hoops were made for larger calf heads, modern heads will leave you with a 2mm gap between the collar and the skirt of the hoops.
If the head is off-centre with a 4mm gap on one side, tuning will be impossible, or worse still the hoop can pull over the aluminium collar.
When fitting new heads make sure that you have a uniform 2mm gap all around the hoop when finger-tightening the tension rods. Once centred, normal quarter-turn tuning will keep it centred.
If the hoop is slightly out of round, use eight shims to get the head centred using its natural flex. Remove the shims when the drum is tuned.I might have an in round Autocrat die cast hoop somewhere if it's too far gone.
