I had heard that the tooling for the speed king( casting dies, etc.) were worn out beyond being usable and that recent sales levels of that pedal were not high enough to justify the high expense of getting new ones made.

Don't know if that is true or not but seems plausible. Casting dies do wear out over time and are also expensive to make. It might not be worth spending thousands of dollars on dies for a pedal that only sells a few hundred a year when they have other newer and possibly better selling alternatives available.

Then again if enough people clamor for new SK pedals and the market would support paying a high premium price for new ones who knows? It was the pedal used by both Ringo and Bonham after all. I used one exclusively for about 20 years myself but eventually moved on to newer (less squeaky) designs.

They discontinued their best snare (super sensitive) for similar reasons.

There's an old saying of if you've never had it ,you won't miss it at work here.

Ludwig is in business to make a profit. I'm sure the only reason they stopped making Speed King pedals and supersensitive snare drums is because they weren't selling enough of them to make the continued inclusion of them in the catalog profitable.

I appreciate and agree with your cynicism. Having been part the supply chain in the musical instrument business, I witnessed what you predict many times. There is also the reverse of this that meets with a whole different type of cynicism from a whole different type of people. They say that it's stupid to pay $2,000 or more for a replica of a vintage instrument that would sell for at least ten times that price. Those people think that you should not play replicas.

Those people don't have any business imposing their views on what someone may choose to own or play. If they don't want to buy or play a replica, fine, that's their business.

The height of hypocrisy is when the "no replica" crap is spewed by a die hard Les Paul player.