What is the interior finish on the drums? Perhaps a tung oil rub if they are bare wood would help?

Or you could glue shag carpet inside them.......LoLoLoLo

Those stencil kits can be made to sound quite good. Throw some good heads on and tune them up right and you will be good to go. There are some gurus on here that are big into these kits. They may be able to help out more.

If we are talking about thin, 3ply luan shells here then I would do what was recomended to me by the one and only johnystixs (spelling?) and that would be to do a few coats of lacquer on the inside of the shells. I have done this and the drums do sound better. Also I have wrapped with wood veneer ( exterior)which also helps the tone. But that would depend on if the drums have ugly beat up wraps or not. Some of the mij stencil kits have killer wraps on them. Good luck and show us some pics please.

JC

Try Aquarians force ten series heads they are 2 ply 10 mil , they will give you a much deeper sound

Doing the interiors will help with -projection- and -volume-, but if you want a FAT sound out of the drums, re-do the bearing edges. A vintage 30 degree round-over profile will give you the sound you're looking for. It's all in the edge profile, my friend.

Welcome to VDF!

John

[QUOTE=Purdie Shuffle;196901]Doing the interiors will help with -projection- and -volume-, but if you want a FAT sound out of the drums, re-do the bearing edges. A vintage 30 degree round-over profile will give you the sound you're looking for. It's all in the edge profile, my friend.

Welcome to VDF!

Purdie is spot on as usual. Good bearing edges with lots of wood to head contact (hence the round over comment) and possibly some two ply coated batter heads will do wonders for your kit. This video is pretty informative:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RNuL2aSuGE&list=UU-7KtMLaQYpA20gd3yjbNNQ&index=10&feature=plcp[/ame]

Look at profile #4, the Vintage Round over. I tend to think the graphic may represent a little sharper point at the apex of the round over and the 30º interior than what many truly vintage drums had, but it gives you the idea. I am no where near as well versed as many of the guys on this forum, but I am fairly certain that the truly great vintage round over edges were very smooth in their transition hence the increased head to shell contact.

One word of caution, before you spend a bunch of money and/or time restoring these, make sure your shells are still in round. If not, you will be hard pressed to really make them do what you want.

First of all...Welcome to the forum!

I'd suggest starting with a fresh set of quality heads. Those suggested above are great. You might find that these 60's Coronets sound a lot better to you than they did back in day without any additional work. I recently restored a set of 60's Crowns and put on new Remo Ambassadors all around. They sound really nice and way better than I remember as a kid. I think the luan has hardened over the past 40+ years, which really helps. I am intrigued with the lacquer or tung oil approach though. If you decide to go that route, be sure to let us know how it affected the tone. In fact, a before and after sound file would be very interesting to hear. And yes, pics please.

There has been a lot of talk regarding stencil kits about the luan hardening over the years and thus improving the tone of the drums. While that is probably true, it is probably equally true that a lot of guys were using MIJ drums as their first kit. Odds are, our tuning skills were not particularly well developed at that point. I recall once filling up my kick drum with news paper because I saw another drummer do this. I decided I liked the sound so much that I proceeded to fill may rack and floor tom with news paper. Ahh youth....wasted on the young. Fortunately that did not last very long. Regardless, I think one of the reasons these kits sound better now is that most of us have a better handle on tuning than we did back then.

By the way, Jonnistix has a several very informative posts and videos regarding restoring MIJ kits. They are worth checking out.

I have a stencil kit that I thought about adding a ply of wood veneer to the inside. Not so much for the tone but the shells are so thin and flexable I'm afraid of breaking them. The kick flex's real bad at the cymbal arm.