I don't have much experience with marching drums from the calfskin era, but tone controls were common on marching snares from the late 1950s through at least the 1970s. You'll see the knob just above the badge on most WFL or Ludwig drums from that era. Rogers drums had 'em, too.

Mylar marching snare heads like the ol' Ludwig Silver Dot had a tendency to ring like crazy and the tone control was useful to tame that ringing.

Well....here's what I've found under the black paint so far......original gold paint on the shell with a perfectly placed VFW decal on the shell. And royal blue paint under the black on the hoops. Therefore I believe that this drum was originally a VFW snare drum, ordered this way from Ludwig as shown in the vintage 1930's catalogs on the vitage drum guide main catalog pages.

So.....instead of refinishing it to natural mahogany, I'm going to restore this drum to its original VFW paint scheme. Gold, with royal blue hoops, calf heads, and gut or wire silk wound snares. I'll post some in progress pics soon....

Do you think there is any way to get the black off and maintain the under color? I have been so close a couple of times to saving an original paint scheme under an overcoat. Sweet looking drum BTW.

Unfortunately in this case the paint stripper started going after the gold paint, so the only choice I have at this point is get the shell completely stripped to bare wood then either clear it or repaint the paint scheme......

Hey L-D, I have missed place the strainer parts i have for these drum's,so at this time i don't have it....Mikey

No problem Mikey. The search continues I guess....

Well....the shell is down to bare mahogany now. The wood is VERY dark, so I'm thinking repainting it in the VFW scheme is the way to go here, after all it was the original paint (as far as I can tell anyway). The hoops....now those are a different story...the black is off of them and the blue is there but in tough shape. I think I need to get down to bare maple on those and start from there with new paint as well. So.....here's my ultimate plan with this drum now: Repaint it in the original VFW gold and dark blue paint scheme, including the VFW logo. Polish all the original nickel plated hardware. I've located a "correct" strainer for it, so I'm going to have to get some gut snares and a leather snare butt from cooperman. I have about 6 small holes to fill in the shell before repainting. Also I have small holes to fill on the top hoop and quite a few holes to fill on the snare hoop. I'll probably have to plug those with dowels and then filler. I'll have to talk to Rob Cook about calf heads, especially a snare side head. Also, the VFW logo is on order.....so.....this should be one nice drum once its all done. Pics to come I promise.....

Latest update.....the VFW decal is on backorder in the size I need (naturally!) and its proving extremely difficult to get a good match to the VFW colors (in spray form anyway)......however, after digging a bit deeper into what Ludwig used to do about shells being painted....I have found out that this would have been a maple shell if it was to be painted as the grain of maple takes paint better than mahogany. Also, I finally got the hoop clip off of the top hoop (the loop where the shoulder harness would attach to carry it while marching) and I've found that there was NO paint under it! Just natural maple....sooooo.......this drum was painted AFTER it left Ludwig. So, I have re-thought my approach to this resto and have decided a natural mahogany shell with natural maple hoops coated with clear satin lacquer is the way I'm finally going with this drum. I found some red mahogany wood filler that is very close to the shell's natural color and I'm going to use that to fill the small holes from where the butt, muffler and non-original strainer were. I also found some filler that is fairly close to the maple hoops color and may try that on them. If it doesn't look good, I'll either leave the hoops be (holes and all!) or purchase new ones from Keller. I'm still gonna go with calfskin heads and gut snares......this should look good when its done!

Ok...finally some in-progress pics.....the shell is stripped down to bare wood, still a bit wet from the stripper-neutralizer....and the hoops, well.....the blue paint that was used has stained them a bit. Think some sanding may be in order to do a final cleanup. I found that the minwax colored wood filler I got is non-hardening, so that won't work for me here. Good thing I re-read the labels BEFORE I used it! :D I think I'm going to leave the extra holes and just clear lacquer everything and re-assemble. The butt-plate cleaned up well, as did the hoop D-ring for the sling. However, I don't think I'll be using the butt plate. I'm thinking a call to cooperman is in order for some more pieces to finish this up. The "correct" strainer should be arriving today. And I have already sold off the "pioneer" strainer. I couldn't believe what I got for it on Ebay!! Stoopid money! But.....it did pay for the "correct" strainer....

A few more in-progress pics.....