I'm sure they will look great. The question, of course, is whether they sound and play the same. Our circa '62 pre serial Jazz Fest, purchased by my son from BEC, is mahogany/poplar/mahogany, of course. The link doesn't indicate the composition of these new shells and of course they have an updated strainer, although the snares are tied to it like they were to the old p83 strainer. In addition, while it may just be the photograph, the black oyster pearl and blue oyster pearl looks very different than those wraps from back in the day. But as I indicated earlier the real question is how they sound and feel.

There seems to be a fair amount of vintage jazz fests available at mostly reasonable prices, as long as you avoid the rarer over-the-top priced wraps, so I'm guessing most people here would still be more inclined to get the real deal.

WOW

Blue Oyster Pearl is nothing like the vintage or the bowling ball version. It like a marriage between Oyster and Sky Blue Pearl.

I think the Black Oyster is also far from the original. It may be a great sounding drum, but I'll take a vintage original any day.

As much as I love Ludwig drums & the folks working there the new stuff does nothing for me anymore. Especially dislike those awful bass drum legs. It seems the older I get, the older my drums & music I listen to gets. Hence I'm passing on NAMM this year. See you all in May in Chicago!

The two main purposes of the spurs is to stabilize the bass drum, especially if one or two toms are rack mounted, and to prevent forward creep. While those heavy duty spurs may not look graceful or pretty to your eyes, I suspect they do a much better job in each of those roles than anything commonly available for virtually any brand in the '60s.

They still insist on using one size tube lugs on all shells... UGH!!!!!! There is no reason why they couldn't drill the lugs on the 6.5" shells for 3.5" tubes....

I don't know what you guys are talking about, all I see is gorgeous Ludwig drums made in the good old USA.

Almost makes you want to be a kid again , and buying your first kit!

Gary

Exactly! Ludwig has had it's ups and downs, but now I think they are better than anytime in their long history. There's a reason why they survived while most of their American competitors are no longer in business.