Awesome kit!! Have fun with the resto!!

Cheers

Great find! I have always wanted a North kit since the late 70's when I saw Cobham playing them. Good luck with the resto!

Michael

If it was the yellow one I once had a chance to buy it not long after he switched brands, the reps for North & some other brands came to the music store I was working in & they had it in their motorhome :)

I remember a white set in the store I bought/took lessons from too. Thought it was novel, but never really gravitated to them.

Beware: the lug screws are famous for stripping the lugs when you take them out...

After an initial wipe down here is my assessment of the not so Great Black North's condition...

Shells:

Lots of scratches, mostly on the undersides, some go through paint layer exposing white underneath, most have been "touched up" with sharpie markers over the years, but no cracks, and no extra holes. The black does look to me like it was the original color. The bass drum has some crusty duct tape residue on the inside, and the North badge/foil sticker on two of the toms is peeling, but still intact.

Hardware:

It's missing only the rubber rim on the bass drum and a few lug screws. There is one cracked but functional leg mount lug on the floor tom, and one mismatched bolt on the rack assembly. Very light rust on a few of the hoops, the lugs and tension rods are in great shape and will clean up perfectly. The bass claws and rods look to be original and will clean up fine. The bass hoop has the original chrome inlay, and will also clean up fine. The worst of the rust is on the rack assembly, I believe it is the original rack and somewhat rare, so I need to see what I can do to bring it back.

The pics that were posted on CL were of such poor quality that it got my hopes up that maybe, just maybe, there was a pristine kit underneath that heavy layer of dust...The perfect Corvette in a barn story. When I saw it in person I was a bit deflated by how filthy nasty and scratched up it was. I think the seller sensed my interest waning as I looked it over, because he eventually offered to throw in a second snare for the agreed price. It is a Rogers R 380, also pretty grubby, but complete and original. I'm sure I'll be asking a few questions about that eventually. In the end, the seller was thrilled because he "paid a co-worker only $75 for the kit sometime back in the 90's," and although I provided him with the thrill of turning a 1000% profit, I think I still did OK.

My first questions for the gurus are...

#1 Would sanding the shells and having them repainted (professionally) be the way to go? Or, would this kill the value?

#2 If the rack does not clean up satisfactorily, is having it re-chromed or powder coated possible, or worth doing?

Thank you in advance for your opinions.

J!m,

Thanks for the heads up on the lug screws! There were two missing already and at least one that was replaced with some other type of screw, that explains it. The lugs are pretty easy to clean without removing them, so maybe I won't risk it for now. If I decide to re-paint the shells I guess I will need to come up with a solution.

AL

Great looking set of drums. Ive had and sold 3 arbiter autotune drum kits which are another weird set up. Should look great once cleaned.

I don’t know about them falling out; just that the threads in the lugs strip when the screws are removed. I’d look into heli-coil kits and figure out if there’s enough meat there for thread inserts. That’d be a solid permanent repair.

I bet a good paint job at an auto body shop would make those look fantastic.

That's a cool set.