I did not address the second part of your post earlier.

You have described your drums as "3 ply rerings, clear interior, blue olive badge sharpen on two sides - but serial as they were 6 ply without rerings from 79." You indicate that the serial numbers are close together in the 1624XXX range.

I would suggest that the dating guide that identifies these as being from 1979 is incorrect. Based upon what I have seen, and to fit with the physical characteristics that you describe, I would think that they are more consistent with drums made in the 1976-77 time frame.

The Ludwig dating guides are fairly reliable for the Keystone badges, but not nearly as helpful for the B/O badge drums of the 1970s. That is one of the reasons that I starting gathering data. I wanted to see if I could contribute to improving the guides a bit.

While working on the Big R Rogers serial numbers, I ran into big huge gaps of non used serial numbers in almost every range I reported.

My one remaining supra is a pointy blue olive first three digits 189... so I am not in your range.

Jack,

As you have documented, Rogers had several different serial number sequences going, so that really offers many more opportunities for gaps. From what I can tell, Ludwig starts to do a similar thing with different models in the 1980s, introducing letters to some of the serial numbers and starting and stopping the numbers at several different points. Fortunately, this happens after the "vintage" drums that are of most interest to people were made.

Rick

I don't have any drums within those ranges. To me those large gaps reinforce the idea that the badges arrived from the manufacturer with the numbers already impressed into them. If that were the case then a simple clerical error when a new batch of badges were ordered could result in such a gap (a sequence of badge numbers that simply do not exist because they were never made). If Ludwig were numbering them themselves you'd expect them to notice the gap at some point and then correct the error.

Then again Ludwig didn't record the numbers they were putting on the drums so they likely didn't much care about any gaps.

Hey guys, I'm new. I don't have a kit in this range, but I do have one that I assumed was from 79 by the serial numbers – 1,7XX,XXX. Pro Beat in Red Silk, clear interiors, 3-ply w rings, pointy badge. When an argument broke out on another drum website about the year, another user piped in and proved that he bought a Ludwig kit with these same attributes in 1978. What the heck is the deal with this time period?

Thanks!

Guys-i don`t have anything in that range either.My b/o `s are in the range of 186XXXX-221XXXX and i bought them second hand on June 9/82 and they were only about 1 1/2 yrs. old then.That puts mine in early1981.Does that sound right for my serials? Great thread!

Wayne

The only dating guide that is available for the 1970s Blue/Olive badge drums (from Rob Cook's The Ludwig Book, reprinted several places on line) is a bit limited. I do not believe that Ludwig was particularly out of control during the 1970s, just that there has not been a thorough investigation into serial number-based dating for this time period. To my knowledge, no one had yet identified the large gaps in the serial numbers that are being discussed in this thread. If one factors in the skipped serial numbers, the dating picture becomes much more clear.

Your drums span about 350,000 serial numbers, so narrowing a date estimate down to a particular year or part of a year that covers all of them seems unrealistic.

Based upon your information, we can conclude that they were made no later than early 1981, but I suspect that some were made well before then.

KCDrumDAD,

Thanks for getting back to me and for your information.I`m getting a feeling mine are 1979/80`.Best of luck with your research and hope you can fill in those missing serial #`s.Thank you for taking the time to try and solve this mystery.

Wayne

Just messin' with you with the attached, Rick. Good luck with your research, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if these ranges were never stamped out.

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