Also...forgot about the Ludwig Clubdate kit....budget.

Man! Ludwig had ALL kinds of options for getting SOME kind of drum set or singular drum under the sticks of drummers out there! Maybe that was a drawback of Rogers -in that, they only made high-end stuff ...and that excluded a lot of people from the start.

When I was a kid, the only drum sets that were affordable and available, were the MIJ kits from the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs. But, when my buddy got a Ruby Strata Standard kit, those were obviously on a different level of "budget" from my Tempro kit! HA!

Hey O-Lugs! An interesting topic to ponder!

Slingerland had the Stage Band, which was very similar to the Ludwig Club Date; using the same shells, but with center mounted lugs to keep the cost a bit lower. The same for Rogers with their offerings for drums with center mounted lugs.

Rogers also commissioned Yamaha to build the R-360 and R-380 drums around 1968. The shells were much better than anything offered by the typical stencil drums and the lugs were designed by Joe Thompson. Still, I'm not quite sure if this qualifies or not.

In the mid-60's, Gretsch offered the Renown outfit, also with center mounted lugs. Same Gretsch quality at a lower cost.

As to Camco, they also offered their Tuxedo outfit with center mounted lugs.

Let's see what others come up with!

-Mark

Slingerland had the Stageband and the Jam Session kits. Both were double tension, single / center lug.

These were their answer to Lludwig's Club Date line.

The Jam Session was the lowest, consisting of a 14X20 bass, 8X12 tom and 5-1/2X14 6-lug snare. The Stage Band added a 14X14 floor tom.

Rogers imported Yamaha made drums as the R-360 and R-380.

Gretsch had the Blackhawk, but don't know too much about them other than they were imports as well.

I see that idrum4fun beat me to most of this!

Here's a drum set offered for sale by Bobby Chiasson at the Jollity Drum Farm in Argyle, New York. Bobby is THE go-to guy for all things Rogers-related. This is a 1966 Rogers Delta outfit in the Tower series. Tower drum sets were usually sold with six lug Luxor snare drums (one of my favorite snare drums).

I'll see your Club Date set, and raise you in quality to a Tower set.

Rogers Banner and Classmate snares...

Cheers

Wow that's a beautiful Rogers kit, leedybdp! I've always admired the look of Rogers' blue sparkle over other blue sparkles...don't know what it is...slightly different hue or something...but wow, those are gorgeous!

Thanks guys!

Thanks to a fellow forumite, I acquired this terrific 1966 Luxor six-lugger snare drum that goes beautifully with my 1966 Top Hat set. I like this snare more than the 1963 chrome over brass Powertone snare I used with this drum set.

As beautiful as the Rogers budget line kits could be, I think that Ludwig's Standard line hit the bullseye. As far as I know, there wasn't an "answer" to the Standards. It wasn't just that they were the same drums with fewer lugs and a budget strainer....The Standards had unique lugs, a completely different hardware package....AND their own, unique line of finishes -all of which were NOT offered as an option within the upper-tier, Classic line.

When I started playing drums, I had a Tempro kit. I had no idea how bad they were at the time because I was young and they were drums. I loved them and that was that. But, I had a buddy whose family had a family band. My friend was the youngest member of the band and he was also the drummer. The drums he played were a set of Ruby Strata Standards. When he let me play them, it was so apparent that they were on a different level from my Tempros, that I stopped wanting to play my drums and only wanted to hang out at his house and play those Standards! Eventually, he traded in the Standards for a blue Vistalite kit. Talk about cool! He was the coolest! However, even though I never said anything, I always thought the Standards sounded better than the Vistas. *sssshhhhh!*

Gretsch's single lug equivalent of Stage Band, Luxor and Club Date was called a "Playboy". It's the only of the four I've never seen in person, but if I ever found one in olive or sunset satin flame, that's the set for me!