"Btw, when this DW/Slingerland deal crashes and burns, I'll be the first to say, I told you so".

What a lovely guy. What else do you hope happens? I don't even want to speculate on those ugly thoughts.

I've been reading this thread from the start and it's obvious that all of us are extremely passionate about our drums...and vintage drums in particular! Everyone here is entitled to their opinion and the vast majority of us keep it civil. Let's continue to do so...before the admins shut down this thread!

-Mark

I am a lovely guy.Kiss

Mark ... the admin/mod would be me, as David is on hiatus for a bit with family obligations. For that matter, It's 99.9% me that handles the forum as it is! That's why David pays me the BIG BUCKS! I appreciate your sentiment here, but nah ... this thread isn't even close to having me intervene. The two Texan's always seem to have a go at each other, and this one is mild .. meaning .. they HAVE indeed remained relatively civil! If it were to completely deteriorate to the very bowels of civility .. or is that the colon of civility?! .. I would have to take control. This is fine, and as you made mention, opinions are held dear, and very passionate. Makes for very fine and entertaining reading, as long as it stays within the lines! THANKS as always Mark!

Tommyp

Thank you Tommy, I'm only voiceing my opinion, I don't get all the backlash. But, it is entertaining.Cool1

The drums I was talking about were all USA made and badged as DW. The Taiwanese drums were from the Buddy Rich Drum Co. which came later under the auspices of Cathy Rich. I'm not sure what, if any, involvement she had with the DW "tribute" drums but it seemed she decided there was more money on the table if she had someone else make the drums. So then there was the short lived Buddy Rich Drum Co. Which, according to their website, offered both American made and imported lines. I think the USA stuff was more or less a boutique Keller builder and with the imported stuff outsourced from one of the usual suspects.

I saw one of the import sets up close and personal at a Chicago area Sam Ash store. It didn't look to bad but had just enough "cheapness" to it not to appeal to me. It was only $999 for 13/16/16/24 w/matching snare. It had a DW style rail mount and the two shell mount cymbal holders included. The oddest thing was the brackets were DW style but with Buddy's signature in the casting instead of the DW logo. I think the DW versions had these brackets too. I don't know if DW provided TBRDC with these parts or sold them the tooling or excess inventory or maintained some connection with the other company or what, but they were definitely DW style brackets.

In retrospect I kind of wish I had bought them, not to play but sort of as a collectors item. The brackets and badges were kind of cool and it wasn't that expensive. It looked nice, just felt sort of "cheap". I had several opportunities to buy them since the set languished on the sales floor for months, proving it's hard to sell crap, no matter what name is on it.

I'm not so sure if it was because they were made overseas or just because they didn't have a familiar name. I see a ton of the overseas kits by Gretsch, DW, Pearl and Tama being played around town. The owner of a local drum shop told me that's were most of his profit comes from, the USA made kits are too expensive for the average consumer.

Well then, what do you call what you do? Do you honestly expect us to believe that you don't go looking for drums for the purpose of flipping? That appears to be exactly what you do, and you've been doing it for years. I can understand if you have everyday financial needs that force you to sell drums, but is that the case?

Look, you can do what you want, but nobody else here has the turnover you do. There's nothing wrong with buying drums to flip, but to say you don't, well, I find that hard to believe.

I saw the offshore Buddy Rich drums at 2008 NAMM and chatted with Cathy Rich for a while in her booth. She really knew very little about the drums, other than they were inexpensive and were very reminiscent of Buddy's last RK set in terms of appearance. The drums themselves were cheesy-looking and cheap. I wouldn't have bought them, and I wasn't alone. Cathy shut the line down a few months later, simply because there was no interest, in large part because she and her associates didn't have the marketing clout or savvy to properly sell the drums. The whole thing was a huge failure.

I can imagine that Buddy was rolling over in his grave to think his daughter put his name on a set of crappy import drums.

I hope one day we will see a different set on TV stages other than DW. I went to The Who at Fenway, DW, music awards DW, half time shows, DW, any where on TV with a stage, DW.

I hate DW for kicking Premier off the Who stage. I played a DW snare that was OK in sound but rattled like a piggy bank. (trash) Saw a kit with splay and caster in the tuning rods and alignment, you can't fix that. (for 7 grand)

For me, D is for don't and W is for want.