Drove 4 hours today to look at some nice British drums in North Bay, way up in Canadian cottage country. Spent 4 more hours talking drums and looking at some kits with Ryan, drummer, drumming teacher and british drum enthusiast. Went home with a Beverley Panorama 21 kit in Rootbeer Swirl (which he also called Mahogany Duroplast- Ryan mentioned Ringo used a Premier kit with the same wrap before his Luddies) in the std 22/12/13/16 config.
Mahogany shells with beech re-rings I believe - definitely a players kit with replacement pearl tom mount, spurs and the slotted rods (sonor-like) were swapped for standards - this suits me, especially the tom mount as I like my toms mounted close and angled just so as a new drummer - no funny drum keys and beefy bass drum spurs also welcome.
The bearing edges and wrap are original and both excellent (less minor inconstancies in bearing edges in that era and a couple scuffs here and there in the wrap). Quite a lovely colour with great clean badges. What shocked me about these drums beyond a great vintage sound (the 16 is to die for) is the ease of tuning - we swapped out three different heads on two toms as an experiment to differentiate between the shell and head sound: coated ambassadors, back dot clears, and vintage A's (the A was way too dead). Tuning the toms and balancing out the tone between the three toms (when we restored all three to the same head) was child's play - they responded so precisely to tuning inputs more like a modern japanese yamaha kit. The bearing edges seem about 30 degrees with a rounder rather than knife edge and the mahogany nicely aged.
I really wanted a two -up, one down set-up to work on my lessons with a vintage sound at a reasonable cost - on the way home, when the Dave Clark Five and the Stones came over the radio as I rambled down the highway, I figured it was a sign I'd made the right choice. Tomorrow I'll post some pics and also hit up ebay for a knock off vintage Beverley logo for the base drum and I'll be all set.
