As heretical as the thought of buying new is, you are correct. Cool Dude

I could never pull the trigger on an old Gretsch bop kit, no matter how tasty I find them. Just way to expensive for what it is. Yeah, I get the rarity factor and what that does for value, but my Fiat Spider was one of the few nice survivors, yet it was never going to be worth much.

Sounding good Jim!

That kit is perfect for that venue and style of music.

On vintage sets, as stated above, it's all about supply (low) and demand (high). On new drums I think you probably can buy a "bop" sized set for quite a bit less than a big set. And how many Catalina Club Jazz bop sets has Gretsch sold for $699?....lots and lots.

Yeah, I almost bought one myself, and then I went all vintage. The Catalina is a nice set for a decent price.

Yeah I wish I would have had access to a kit like the Catalina Club when I was starting out. My first kit was a Tempro and it was junk....but I still loved it. Even with the Chinese aspect to many kits made today, they still blow away the old "my first drum kit" kits. The local jazz club (now defunct) purchased a Catalina Club for use by the drummers who performed....they sounded as good as anything. I've never been "anti new drums". In fact, I love drum technology a lot and I appreciate the advancements that have been made since the days when vintage drums were new.

There are a lot more intrinsic things that add to the value of a vintage musical instrument...practicality not being one of them.

You just saved me a lot of typing, O-lug!

I made this Bop drum set from orphan drums. The 7x11 tom is Leedy from sometime before World War Two. The Floor tom is a 12x16 Leedy marching tenor drum from the 1950s. The bass drum is made from an 16x18 Slingerland 1960s floor tom for which Leedy lugs dropped right in to existing holes. I wrapped the drums in White 3-D Moire. No sonner did I finish this project than I found an Oak Lawn Camco Tuxedo snare drum in factory White 3-D Moire. If I were still gigging, I think that I would have the bass drum professionally cut down from its 16" depth to 12" in depth.

There's Less Relaxing (in higher volume situations) with an 18" bass drum.

How come Signature below isn't showing..

there it is nevermind..

Much more than cool, there were practical reasons for urban drummers in big cities, where most of the jazz was located, to play 12/14/18 kits. As you mentioned, portability was a key factor for many drummers, including me. Try navigating subways and cabs in a busy urban setting with large drums, lot's of cymbals and heavy duty hardware.

From the late '60s through the late '70s when I was gigging in Greenwich Village, Soho, and midtown Manhattan, ease of transportation was a significant feature of a kit.

Smaller drum sizes with light weight stands, pedals and accessories, and compactness using a minimum number of cases was extremely important. I used my 20" Lugwig BD when someone was giving me a ride, but if I had to use a cab or subway it was always an 18" bop BD.

To make getting to and from a gig more tolerable, I often played a simple two piece set in those days. I used an 18" inch bass drum in a case with a pocket in which I also stored an 18" thin crash/ride and a 16" crash. Along with that I had a specially sized and built small wheeled trap case that I had made for me at Frank Ippolito's drum shop. In it I kept my Ludwig Supraphonc with my 14" hats pressed against it in a protective bag, very compact and light weight stands and pedals, and all my sticks and brushes. In addition, I had the case sized so when I turned it on its side it served as my throne with a thin circular foam pillow I made myself and stored on top of the cymbals in the BD bag.

As a result, I was able to navigate the streets, subways and cabs with just two cases, a relatively light rolling trap case, and an 18 inch bass drum case with a cymbal pocket. :)

I'm on the West coast and drove a 1969 Karmann Ghia to my gigs and I had to make my own bop kit that was much smaller than the standard 12,14,18 kits. I never had to deal with the subway (Thank God!).

My gigging kit for years was a 14 X 11 Rogers Memriloc tom tom, which sat in a homemade cradle that I built in my woodshop, a 12 X 8 mounted via a Memriloc single arm to the bracket on the 14 X 11....a Tama "grabber" type cymbal arm clamped to the post of that tom arm, an old 1400 flat base cymbal stand with an old crash/ride and an old beat up Tama hi-hat stand that was traded to me for a Pearl tom tom stand...by a young kid named Jason who worked at a local music shop at the time....went on to become the drummer for a famous band that the kids like..."Death Cab For Cutie" (my niece loves them). So when she heard that story, she now thinks the hi-hat stand is holy! LOL! I got Jason to sign an autograph for her. She almost fell over...but her mom found the piece of paper and thought it was a name of an older boy whom she wasn't supposed to associate with, so her mom took it and threw it away!

Anyway, yeah...for me, even a "standard" size bop kit (12.14,18) was too big to gig with!