&Hey folks,
Haven't posted in a few years and decided to reinstate my profile because I need some help identifying a 12x8 70s era Ludwig tom. Here's the back story.
I was shopping around on Reverb.com for a player Ludwig 12x8 that i was planning to restore and rewrap for a downbeat gigging kit that is made up of orphans from different eras. I found this 70s white marine pearl tom and in my excited haste, I pulled the trigger on it without reading the full description. My fault. It turns out what originally looks to be like a converted concert tom. The only evidence I have of this is from the seller's description that was on the Reverb ad, and the fact that it has an extra 4 holes from what looks like a Ludwig concert tom clip mount. I found an old thread up here last week while researching info on converted concert toms, and found out some interesting things about 70s era Ludwig concert toms. "Bermuda" Schwartz stated that Ludwig made concert toms with both bearing edges (i didn't know that), and that they only used mini classic lugs. But here's what makes my alleged concert tom so strange, to me at least.
My tom has large classic lugs and they look to be factory installed, but the other dilemma is that the bottom/reso lugs are slightly misaligned or off centered, which is another bit of info I found that wasn't unheard of from Ludwig's quality control at that time. In short, it was not uncommon to have misaligned lugs both in the 60s and 70s, due to Ludwig's slack on customer order demand. Another thing to point out isbthat all lugs have the same type of screws, which are hex and have no screw driver head. Anyone please feel free to correct me on any of this information, as I'm just finding all this out from this, and other forums.
Now my questions to the Ludwig experts are these : Is my drum a converted concert tom, or a mount modified, sub par quality control era Ludwig double headed tom ? I'm probably going to get rid of it anyway, as those off centered lugs are driving my drum OCD crazy :) Of course any and all help is much appreciated. I will attempt to post some pics for you guys to inspect the drum yourself, but please forgive me if they don't come out properly. Oh, and if anyone has a 70s blue sparkle 12x8 tom that needs a home, I'm your guy !;)
Thanks to all !
Rob