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You might try sizing it with "Paint"

Very nice! I love it when we find another new (old) kit coming out of the attic. Those are really sweet. Don't know how much you are into the background, but here it is. The Apollos' you are the proud owner of belong to the Star family. Star and Pearl both made Apollo drums. The distributor went to Pearl later in the run because they (presumably) wanted to keep the cost as low as possible, and Star was using much higher quality parts throughout the history. What we are finding is that the Star hardware is typically heavier from the foundry process, in other words, they use more metal in the casting of the lugs and thicker stock for other metals, tubing, strapping for the rail consolette parts etc. Later in the history of Apollo, in the 70s, they were beginning to get closer in cost to some of the newer Ludwig kits designed to go back and get down and dirty, the venerable and revered Standards. So, in an attempt to garner and keep market share, they went to Pearl at the time Pearl was beginning to go to Taiwan to start production in the lower waged labor market there. The reason Pearl moved the budget line production into Taiwan is because of the technology boom that was beginning to take shape within Japan, and the education and higher wages that were becoming more prevalent.

Jonnistix, thanks for the info. I am a bit up on my history, but I did not know about Star being involved as well. I have been guessing early 60's on these. Am I close? My only reasoning for this guess is the type of tom mounts.

The Champ is early-mid 60s, while the BS is likely 69-72, because of the chrome hoops and the use of the rail, after about 72, they started to migrate, I believe, to Pearl. Could have been as late as 74 though.

Are the L shaped tom holder typical of Star drums? Both these sets have them.

Good question! Does it look like these are the original mounts on the toms? Had there been any other holes drilled? I thought that the L mounts were indicative of the Pearl made stuff. Hmm.

Calling John and Ralf!

Everything looks to be original. I was having the same thought, after looking at other posts, about the L-shaped mounts being Pearl.

Ralf will say no, they are not. I will say this: Anytime you offer this type of service, the buyer is going to have certain specs they desire, and the builder would then accomodate those specs. So what I am saying is, looking at the lugs, those are certainly Star. Now, it could be that the kits arrived sans brackets and the importer took care of that, if Star just would not offer them. It would not be that much to do either way, so we can only guess. If I wanted it my way, and they could not accomodate me, and did not want to go to Pearl because I really liked the Star line up and service yadayada, I would have done it that way.

It is so hard to tell with these sets. I have a WMP Apollo set with the teardrop style lugs (there are a few pics of it in a thread called MIJ stencil v.3 Apollo WMP 5 piece), but mine has a double flat tab mount that, I thought, were exclusively associated with Star.

But what John said makes a lot of sense...