Very few wrapped Ludwig drums are maple/poplar/maple. Nearly all of them, post 1967, are mahogany/poplar/maple. If you actually look at 3 ply wrapped drums from the late 60's right up to the change to 6 ply shells you'll see that nearly all of them have mahogany as the outer ply under the wrap.

But the whole point of the Resocoat or Granitone paints was so they could use either mahogany or maple on the inside and have them look the same when mixed into sets. That is why the Standards continued to receive the treatment even after the classic line went to nearly exclusively using clear maple interiors.

I never heard the whole point of Resocoat or Granitone was not so they could use different types of wood and they'd all match up?

WFL2 told me it was because the wood didn't look good, not for mixing and matching different woods.

^Makes sense to me. Back in those days, I'm sure that a painted interior was considered more finished and professional looking.

And, nobody really cared too much about what kind of wood they used I've been told (by long time employees).

That's correct. As a working drummer back in the late fifties and all through the sixties, I didn't care about which types of wood were used for making the drum shells as long as it wasn't that boingy-sounding "balsa" wood that was in the Asian firewood drum shells. Every drummer I knew thought the same way--even the drummers who were still using those boingy-sounding drums.

^And again, that would make sense. Maple and mahogany were VERY ubiquitous woods that were commonly used in ALL kinds of woodworking industries back then. So, it would follow that those commonly-used woods would be the ones to make drums from, as well. Now, of course, good mahogany and good maple aren't as ubiquitous and they have been widely replaced in the industry, by faster-growing and much softer woods. Wood quality, in general has gone way down. That's why there are a lot of alternative building materials nowadays....like all the chip wood panels used in buildings -complete crap, but, it means the builders can build crap faster than....umm...crap. I digress... :)

That's kind of the same thing. Perhaps not painting specifically so they could mix and match woods (although they did do that depending on what they had on supply) but so they'd have a uniform look (and all look nicer) no matter which wood ended up as the inner ply. It's true that drummers of the day (at least those that I knew) were not particularly concerned about what wood was going into their drums but they might want them to all match in appearance at least.

Is it a coincidence that when they decided to use maple as the interior ply exclusively (well almost) that they dropped the paint for a clearcoat....except in the one line where they did continue to use different woods?

I'm not intending to argue the point. If they did do it simply to hide ugly wood it still did have the side benefit of adding a uniform look to drums that weren't always made the same way when those drums were mixed into sets.