I stopped by a friend's house earlier today to see an early '70s Slingerland kit he had recently purchased. The shells, bearing edges, wrap and rims on all of the drums were in really nice condition, cosmetically speaking. However, the majority of the lugs, as well as the floor tom leg mounts, were either totally corroded, cracked, flaking or pitted beyond belief. I've never seen anything like it. In regard to the lugs, the pitiful condition was the same on both the batter sides of the drums, as well as on the bottom sides. I've attached a few pics of the cracked mounts as well as a couple lugs that are almost completely devoid of their chrome. I've never seen a kit in such good over-all cosmetic condition with lugs and leg mounts destroyed like this. Any idea what might have caused this horrific condition?
What Happened Here?
Maybe these drums were stored in a dark humid area close on the coast where the sea air was doing its thing but the wrap was protected from direct sunlight - but then you would wonder why the hoops are not also affected :confused: Strange indeed
Snares: Arai /Mapex / Ludwig / Slingerland / Star / Tama
Cymbals: Meinl / Paiste / Tosco / Wuhan /Zildjian / Zyn
That is crazy, particularly if it also didn't affect the tom hoops as black label pointed out.
Did Slingerland dabble with different suppliers in this era? Early 70's does align with the sale of the company, correct? Wonder if it's a similar story to the Ludwig anti-galvanic suppliers? But it seems like we would have seen more examples of this degradation. I'm stumped.
Tama Superstar 81 Aqua bop
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Way Too Many Snares, She Says
How bizarre. I've owned plenty of late 60's / early 70's Slingerland drums. But, I've never seen anything like this. My first thought was that maybe the drums spent most of their life on cruise ships.
I'm thinking that one of the prior owners had another Slingerland kit that was being used more often than this one, perhaps due to the respective drum sizes, stripped out the "good" lugs and mounts from this kit to use on his other kit, and replaced them with whatever it is that's currently on there. It's the only thing that makes sense to me.
The rims would be either brass or steel under the chrome whereas the cast parts are chrome over (primarily) zinc. It would seem that the drum was stored under some type of conditions that really didn't agree with that particular alloy. Either that or those were from a particularly poorly cast batch. Hard to say. The old Slingerland lugs from the 30's tend to get brittle and crumbly with age but I haven't seen that happen with the newer "sound King" types.
Any chance those lugs etc. are MIJ Slingerland clones?
Wow...it looks like they were programmed to self-destruct or something...
That's bizarre indeed!
My guess is poorly cast alloy lugs which were exposed to some extreme heat condition. The heat expanded the alloy, cracking the chrome plating and finally cracking the alloy to pieces. Just a crazy guess, because if that's accurate, someone should have seen other examples of this, no? How could this lug failure be unique to this set?
Any Slingy owners out there ever see this?
Mike
There`s no Iron in those lugs, no rust. They`re like Graphite or something.
.....76/#XK9207 Phonic Sound Machine D454/D-505 snares !i
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