Hey Mark,

Yeah, that little 20" bass drum turned out pretty sweet. The timbale is a 3x12. I now own 10 Blaemire shells, 7.5x8, 7.5x10, 8x12, 8.5x13, 12x15, 16x16, 12x20, & 14x24. Plus a 6.5x14 snare. Actually, I have one more, a little baby 4.5x6 shell that I'm thinking of making a hand drum with. As far as Allen, he was 81 years old when he passed away. It's just been a little over a year since he passed away, as I noticed the dates that Jerry had marked in the downbeat snare that he built as a tribute to Allen.

WOW!! man that is a nice collection!!! Allen lived a good long life, were loosing all the masters to old age!!

Another update: Back in April, I finished my 12x15 floor tom, which will work great with the 12x20 bass drum. Also, just recently, I finished a 5.25"x13" snare drum.

The Blaemire section of the forum is Buzzing. Very cool.

Thanks again to Greg and Jerry. I never could have restored 15 drums without their help.

BTW I heard that John Guerin, one of my favorites of all time, played drums on the Ventures hit "Hawaii 5-0".

Scott A

I recently heard that Hals concert tom kit was possibly lent out to other drummers and that the big tom fills on Hawaii 5-0 could indeed be Blaemires. Pretty cool.

That is John Guerin playing on that tune,which he co wrote.John was a concert tom guy and played Pearl drums.He was also a pretty popular studio guy and is responsible for the drumming on at least one Dirty Harry movie,although it sounds like him on the second movie(Magnum Force) also.

Steve B

the first time i seen a blaemire kit was the only year the hollywood vintage drum show was in aneheim. i was asked by my old boss to helped the owner either load or unload the kit. it was a natural finish with ludwig hdwr (possibly you mendozart) then i never seen another kit or pieces again. until...

in 1999 i helped to refurbish some of karen carpenter's kits thru my old boss and for richard carpenter. karen had a set of the blaemire concert toms. as far as i know, only ringo is the only other person with a set. here's a pic of me after restoring one of karen's kits and with the toms.

i have a pic of richard holding a blaemire tom, but it won't load here. it is on my blog with my little story about karen's kits, but i didn't wanna cut and paste it here and hijack this post.

anyway, i tried to find info on blaemire but there really isn't much out there.

since he was local, did he have a store? how do you find shells. did someone buy all the old stock? just wondering.

Hey Fish,

That's some good stuff on Karen's kit. As far as finding these drums, they are getting harder and harder to find. They just tend to come out of the woodworks every so often. About 80% of my kit was from a lot that Jerry got from Stan at Pro Drums in Hollywood. Don't worry about hijacking, if you have anything pertaining to Blaemire drums, it's all good with me. Here's the pic you tried to download, thanks.

Very cool Fish.

I had just one picture of Karen playing that kit.

Here is an ironic twist to this post. My older son dated Richards daughter Traci. They live here in Thousand Oaks CA. During that time I told her of my Blaemire kits and that I knew that her Aunt used to have one of this concert tom set ups. She asked her dad and confirmed that he still had it in storage. I ended up meeting Richard when we all went to a car show (Richard has some very cool cars) that I was entered in. While walking around I asked him about the drums and how Karen came to have them. He told me she saw and heard them in a studio that Hal was set up in and decided to get a kit.

I am always amazed at the connections and findings of the Blaemire drums I have found and restored.

Hey Jinx... any of the original shells left in your stash?

John