Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls...after owning this snare drum for almost 8 years (purchased May, 2010) I've finally cleaned and detailed it! It NEVER takes me this long to detail a drum!
The finish is very faded over much of the drum, which was originally a beautiful red glass glitter, and there is some flaking and pimpling on some of the chrome. Still I recognized the drum for what is was...an attempt by the Japanese to cash in on the Slingerland Radio King snare drum! My guess is that Slingerland found out about the drum and insisted it needed to change. By the 1963 catalog, the drum did look different. I plan to post another topic on all this, including more pictures of my drum and catalog pictures showing how the drum, No. 2256, morphed from 1961 to 1966. In the meantime, I hope you like my RK clone!
-Mark