Hi,

This drum is officially the first vintage drum that started my vintage snare drum hobby. I always had about 10 vintage drums lying around that I played here and there but I never paid much attention to the “vintage” aspect of those drums. This changed in March of 1995. I had been reading about vintage drums and my first vintage drum deal was with Sam Adato’s Drum Shop in San Francisco. Sam said that this drum is very rare so I took his word for it and traded a 1960s Gretsch Blue Sparkle round badge snare... the rest rest is history.

1939 WFL 7 x 14 WMP TWIN SENSITIVE HOLLYWOOD SWING MODEL (Cat. No. 421)

THE SHELL:

The 7 x 14 WMP finished three -ply mahogany shell is in very good shape. The WMP still has a lot of white pearl remaining in the finish. The WFL badge is very clean.

THE HARDWARE:

All of the nickel plated hardware was in great shape and was easy to clean and polish. The side by-side Twin Strainer assembly works fine and was a revolutionary invention for the era. The Streamlined “Zephyr” tension casing are in very good shape. WFL started out with three lug designs; the first was a tube lug like the earlier Ludwig & Ludwig tube lugs, the second design was a Strupe-designed cast lug that was called The “Imperial” (this is the same name used for the more modern day Ludwig Imperial lugs but a different design), the third design was a pressed-steel piece called The “Zephyr” that was named after a train and a Lincoln car, both symbolizing a modern design. Another improvement was the invention of the triple-flange hoops, this was WFL’s answer to the common complaint about stick breakage that was associated with earlier double-flanged “stick chopper” hoops.

Both sets of snares are of-the-era. As this was the beginning of my hobby my calf head “stash” had not yet been established so I used top and bottom Remo Renaissance heads.

As always I welcome your comments and related stories.

Enjoy!

Mike Curotto