It's an old "juvenile" or "student" drum. It's probably from the 1920's because that's when they first started appearing in the old drum catalogs.I have never seen the "turnbuckle" style tensioners like the ones on your drum before. I think they are very cool!Anyway, yes, you could certainly try to set it up for gigging and use it. It's going to be very temperamental, though because it sounds like you're going to have to get some custom sized drumheads fitted for it -calfskins cost about $60 each!!!! Then you're going to be dealing with a single-tension system wherein the top and bottom heads cannot be independently tuned. How much tension can the shell handle? -Probably more than you'd think, but it's probably not going to be able to get up anywhere near the range of a modern drum, should you desire a high-pitched sound and quick response. And be careful to tension the heads evenly because if the tension is uneven it will deflect and contort the roundness of the shell.They just weren't really made to be a workingman's drum. They were often billed in catalogs as being the "perfect holiday gift idea for a boy" or something like that! :)You might consider dampening the area where the head is split and then actually giving it some stitches with surgical silk! It is skin, after all! -nice rainy day project, maybe?Cool drum! Thanks for sharing it with us!
Thanks for all the great replies! It really helped me with everything.
About it being a student drum, that would make perfect sense. In fact I found an all maple one on ebay, in the same size but with different tuning mechanisims. It had an identical interior, and it was listed as a ''child's drum'', BIN in the 399-499$ range!Eye Ball I very highly doubt that it's worth
anything close to that.
Yes, it would be THE snare for gigging. Light weight, small and flipping gorgeous! Setting it up, it's probly the most comfortable position I've had a snare drum in. It's size gives you so much leg room!
I don't think I will be playing this drum with calf, or any other drum for that matter. Just for tuning reasons and playabilty. It would be a whole new world for me! I heard remo will make any custom size of head in any model no extra cost, so I am going to go with fiberskyns.
I've got lots of skin for you to do new heads for it if you like. Stuffs like paper so it is cheap to ship.It looks like the tensioning is done for both heads at once,when you turn the centre nut(left and right hand threads?)---- similar to the system where a long throughrod threads into the opposite claw.This was common in the old days and has been used on cheaper bassdrums until quite recently. For this system to work properly,the two heads need to be identical in weight,easy with bass and toms but not so easy with snare drums.The deal being,that you have to have a batter head on the snare side otherwise you end up overtensioning the slunk head,or the batter head is too thin if you try the opposite . This does change the ability of the drum to perform up to modern standards. The thicker head on the bottom will yield a low throaty tone, with relatively slow response but being only 12.5" and fairly thin it,that should help overcome these defects. I have a 16x4 all brass snare drum from about the 1920's, that tensions with throughrods into a bottom nut(this drum does not use claws;because remarkably, it has profiled triple flanged hoops in solid brass.I use a very thin batter head and matching snare head(both mylar) and it sounds pretty good. Has wirewound silk string snares ,which were common up into the 1950's. You might try finding some of those or gut even.
Thanks a million for offering me heads, you're being way too kind! But I already stated it above, no need to repeat. I breifly tensioned up the drum the other day (you can just imagine the ear to ear grins me and my father where wearing) and yeah, no bloody kidding they're like paper! One hit and a 9'' rip apeared. I taped it up, kept playing it and just from resting my stick on the drum, the stick fell through like butter. (I was digging the stick in to thead with trad. grip) That kind of gave me a bad first impression of calf heads, but what the heck, they're from a 90 year old student snare!
Yes, I am very familiar with single tension systems. The kit I am building is all single tension, so I will take your advise with having the same head on both batter and reso side. Ambassador fiberskyns it is! And yeah, it deffinetly won't be a modern kit! Yippi!:p
I still have some of the snares you mentioned. They are the original snares from my prized 1929 NOB ludwig pioneer. I'm glad I didn't sell them yet, I didn't think of using them. Totally forgot I had them. Thanks for giving me that idea!!!!Cool1
Again, thanks a whole bunch for helping me. This forum is da bomb!LoLoLoLo
