I don't know your age. I'm in my mid-seventies. But, on the planet where I lived and played drums in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, most drummers who played with two toms up front, played either two 8x12 or two 9x13 toms. I don't think that this was unique to Chicago.

I passed the 68 goal post last September - Born in '52. I wasn't living on this planet during that era. I was living north of Boston. It was more common to see and 8x12 and a 9x13 up top, which I think became more standard because that was what the catalogs showed. My first set was MIJ in 22, 12, 13, 16 configuration but I abandoned the 12 almost immediately. I don't recall seeing anything else in the drum shops, but that surely doesn't mean it wasn't there. I do think twin 13's would have been unusual. I have noticed over the years that the Canadian drum sets more often had a 20, 13, 16 or 20, 13, 13, 16 configuration than we saw in our area.

Tonally, a 12 and a 13 makes a bit more sense. You more easily get a second voice. You'll notice, however, there was initially an issue with having the tops of the toms level. Rogers makes a point in their literature for the new Londoner mount. You could have a 12 and 13 at the same top level. I think the idea was to avoid getting hung up on the second tom if you were running around from snare to floor. The earlier double tom mounts didn't have that flexibility (though the Top Hat did). Thus the early Ludwig Hollywood and Gretsch Rock 'n Roll kits with twin 12's. But later Ludwig and the Rogers mounts allowed the tops to be even. Gretsch and Slingerland seemed to be later getting there.

So your earlier entry on the scene would have found a different situation than my entry beyond the mid-point of the '60's.

I appreciate that we are from slightly different eras and vastly different areas of the country. In my experience, the music stores in the Chicago area usually displayed two-up drum sets with matched size toms. 20" and some 22" bass drums almost always had 8x12 toms and some 22" or most larger bass drums almost always had 9x13 toms. I played more Slingerland drum sets than any other brand. For the older double tom holders, the factory would mount the receivers on the toms so that the top rims of different size toms would be even. I bought a ten-year-old new old stock green sparkle Slingy set that had been in sealed factory shipping cartons in the attic of an old music store all that time. When I ordered a second tom of a larger size, the warehouse manager at Slingerland asked me if the new larger tom would be on my left or on my right so that he could mount the receiver at the correct height for the older double tom holder. He did a perfect job for the new tom that was a perfect match to the other drums in the set.

I borrowed this kit from Bobby for our third album, Heaven Tonight.

How'd ya like it for your type of playing?

For what it's worth (not much), here is a poor photo of Bobby's drum kit, taken with my cheap Instamatic camera. Dec 5, 1969 in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The set still had original heads on it. We swapped out the heads and the kit functioned fine.

Bobby had other cool kits at home. He had a wood Slingy set with an 18" bass drum in his practice room.

In his basement he had a room where a few kits were stored, including a Fibes kit as I recall.

He was living with Pam Grier at the time. She cooked us ribs for dinner!

The dinner and the people you were with seem like very good company to me. So do the drums.

That's interesting. Do you think he'd been using the same heads since the kit was new or that they were replacement Rogers, given they would still have been available in the early 70's?. It would be stunning to think he could have done all those gigs and recordings with the original ones, both from the point of view of their quality and his style of playing.

I'd bet the heads were original.

They were almost black with use.

BTW; I used my 1966 Rogers kit on our first two albums, and it had all the original bottom heads still on it (and they stayed on until I sold the set a few years ago).