Hey, Charles, as you probably know, U.S. Mercury drums were a stencil of Star. The claws on my Supremes and Tempos (also stencils of Star) measure about 2 1/2 inches at the widest on the outside. I hope this helps.

Brian

It sort of helps. :) It correlates closely to one of the claws I have here.

I'm attaching a photo. Is there any way to confirm if either of these claws is a correct Star 920-era claw? As you can see, there are some slight diferences.

Charles,

here is the picture you requested.

The claw is 2 3/8" wide.

Jim

Any opinions on the comparison pic I posted? I know there are some knowledgeable folks in the house.

Jim is correct. I've just measured out the bass drum claw at my DrumMate (= Star) drumset: it has exactly 6 cm, which are the same as 2 3/8".

I've seen both versions (the one with the longer 'tube' and the one with the shorter 'tube' in the middle, on the side where the T-rod goes into it) at Star drumsets. The Tama catalogues also show both versions at different times:

Shorter type (no. 913)/ earlier ( ? ) model:

http://www.tamadrum.co.jp/anniversary/expansion.php?cat_id=5&now=10

Longer type (no. 946)/ later ( ? ) time:

http://www.tamadrum.co.jp/anniversary/expansion.php?cat_id=6&now=11

But I wouldn't go so far to say that either version is typical for another production time. So you can take each one to be correct.

Ralf

Thanks a lot, Ralf.

I was able to get my hands on 3 different Star kick drums in the last couple of weeks and all of them had the 2-1/2" claws identical to the larger one in my pic above.

I'd also done some comparisons of the claws online at full-size scale using old catalog pics and other images, and all of those that I found also matched up with the larger claw.

So I could only conclude that the larger claw was the correct one...especially having seen so many matches in person.

No doubt there is a lot of variance among these parts, but I just came across that larger one so often that it leads me to believe it is the more common version.