It's gonna be a killer kit ... I like it !

Nice work !!

Were there any differences between the Name Band, Progressive Jazz and Bop kits besides shell sizes? I see a lot of overlap between which shell sizes were available between those 3 kits in general and throughout the years.

yes look in around the 1966 catalog-->

http://drumarchive.com/Gretsch/

for models

and here

http://www.vintagedrumguide.com/

If any of the drums have an internal paper tag with Serial number we can esimate year born. There's been an excellent book written recently and I think many do it's Spot on Dating

https://gretschdrumdatingguide.com/gretsch-drum-guide.html

I've looked through those catalogs already and it looks like there really was no difference between the different models. The Name Band came in 22-16-13 but with the option for a 20" bd while the Bop came with 20-16-13 with the option of a 20" bd. No other difference noted between the 2. In the Drums A Le Carte section, there is no distinction, they're all just drums available in different sizes, same hardware and everything.

The Progressive Jazz came 20-14-12 but with the option of an 18" bd.

I wanted to know if I had a Name Band (with the optional 20") or a standard Bop kit. It just looks like 6 of one or 1/2 dozen of another.

"I wanted to know if I had a Name Band (with the optional 20") or a standard Bop kit. It just looks like 6 of one or 1/2 dozen of another". That is one of the most intelligent statements I have read on any drum forum. The names of the outfits pictured in the catalogs are just that--names for catalog pictures. "Hey marketing guys... if we picture a 20" bass drum with one 12" and one 13" mounted tom along with a 16" floor tom, what should we name the outfit so people can just tell the music store that they want the drums pictured on page eleven in Blue Sparkle"?

Let me give you another compliment. Thank you for knowing that you could work like hell to remove the paint, sand down the shells, stain and clear coat the shells. It would be a lot of work with the end result looking like someone stripped, sanded, stained, and clear-coated some drum shells with ugly outer plies. The wrap that you chose is beautiful. What is it called?

It's called a few different things by different distributers but it's either Black & White Oyster or just White Oyster, depending on who you get it from. Precision Drum got a small batch of it in for me and I have enough left over to wrap up a matching snare when I get that far.

The only production drums I've seen it on is one of the nicer Pearl kits. I think I initially found it on ST Drums website. I ordered it through Precision because I had other work I wanted done to the shells that I didn't feel comfortable doing myself and with a kit like this, I want it done right!

My question behind my question was to find out if there were any other differences between the various models like different lugs/hoops/muffler setups or number of lugs per shell for a given size, like how there are models of snares offered with differences like 6 vs 8 lugs.

It does not look like there were any differences between various models of kits like that, at least not that I can tell.

Gretsch made just one kind of drum (using shells they subcontracted from Jasper) in various sizes. Like Ludwig the outfit names are just that, marketing names for various combinations of those drums. a 20" bass drum or a 12" tom was the same regardless of what outfit it came with. The bass drums might get some variation as far as mounting hardware or the placement thereof but the underlying drum structure was the same.