My 14x10 Ludwig tom is not round, the bearing edges are not flat,
good tuning is not possible.
Does anyone know a company that sells new stainless steels shells?
My 14x10 Ludwig tom is not round, the bearing edges are not flat,
good tuning is not possible.
Does anyone know a company that sells new stainless steels shells?
My 14x10 Ludwig tom is not round, the bearing edges are not flat,good tuning is not possible.Does anyone know a company that sells new stainless steels shells?
I certainly do not know of any. If this is a Ludwig stainless shell. it is marine grade stainless top of the line. A good marine stainless steel ship repair marine company can fix the shell.
Is it possible to order a stainless steel shell directly from Dunnett?
Not sure of that is that the shells that you have already ? The Dunnett shells are not of the quality of the Ludwig shells, If you have a ludwig kit it would just be cheaper to buy another drum.
I have played the Ludwig Stainless Steel reussie Ludwig kit from 2009 with Dunnett shells.
These drums sound superb, the quality is outstanding.
My original Ludwig Stainless shells from the seventies have some problems,
they are all a little out of round.
My 14x10 tom is a quality desaster. Round like an egg and the bearing edges are a catastrophy.
All 8 of my Ludwig stainless steel shells are perfect, You just have to look for the right ones,
I restored a Ludwig SS kit that had multiple problems.
The bass drum had a ripped hole where one of the spurs went.
One of the toms had dented edges and was out of round.
I found a fellow who worked extensively with SS and he put a new rolled piece of SS in the large hole, welded, ground and polished the area. I re-drilled the spur and mount holes.
As for the edges he filled in the dented edges by flow welding those areas.
Then ground them off flat and shaped the edges to match the Ludwig flanges.
They came out not perfect, but you had to look close to see that they had been reworked. It can be done if you are wanting to keep the shells you have.
As far as the Dunnett SS Ludwigs, they do not have the same rolled flanges that the Ludwigs do, but they sound absolutely great.
I feel for you. I had similar issues recently. Too many cats in the 70's took the bottom heads off and didn't use cases.
Marco Stella in Milan makes nice stainless drums, but they are pricey. Seek him on YT.
I'm not sure if Ludwig is still selling SS; in any event, you'd want them to be of the same specs as the 70's materiel if they are to be a match.
Before you go spend big bucks, measure and log the distance across the shell from lug to lug. Identify which are the most out of round; You may be able to squeeze or malletize it back into a semblance of round, to where it'll take a head and tune easily. It would help to have a drum diameter chart - I think you can get one at Drummaker.com. You can use this as a template to monitor roundness restoration. If it's 1/8 or so out of round, this is probably tunable.
Once you massage it, you might want to check out Aquarian's New Vintage heads, or Attack medium coated for the tops, and those or clears for the bottom. Their collar and mylar seem to be more tolerant of these faults, and they sound great on these drums, to my ears. I wouldn't recommend the Bozzio series for this application.
I had a problematic 9x13; after massaging as described above, the drum tunes easily and sings.
Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0HAaE7okGU.
Hope this helps.
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