A guy has a set of these for sale with a slingerland brass snare for 450. The badge on the tom is a wide diamond, not round like these or even the rest of the drums with the kit. Everything else is the same though.

I don't believe that Gracy had anything to do with Pearl, Tama or Hoshino. Those "long diamond" badge drums are early 60's. Quite rare in the U.S. There are a few Gracy posts on the site.

OsakaBop would be a good member to consult on this.

You are welcome for the info - duh !

I've learned that Pearl made shells for around 30 drum makers in Japan with various names attached to them . No doubt this was one .

MIJ stencil drums of the 60's & 70's were made mostly three companies, Pearl, Star (which is now Tama), and Hoshino (Kougyou). There were some other manufacturers in the market as well, Yamamoto, Sakae, Yamaha. Yamamoto was the manufacturer. Gracy was their own brand. There is no known association between Yamamoto and the other stencil manufacturers. While most of the stencil drum makers copied Slingerland, Sonar, Leedy, and Rogers, the only one to copy Gretsch was Yamamoto.

Hi Marc!

For clarification, are you saying that "Gracy" branded drums were built by Yamamoto? I have your Stencil Drums book and the only reference to Gracy is a possible relation to Hoshino, but not verified.

-Mark

Yamamoto from what I have recently learned was the maker of most Gracy badged drums.

They also made the vintage stencil kits that used the Gretsch cloned lugs with badges like Del Rey, Norma, and Rocket. in fact the original Gracy subject kit from 2007 was wrapped in the same finish as this Norma kit I have here. The faded weave pattern wrap which appears as sort of a cool silver-grey color was originally a beautiful blue. When the degree of fade is really advanced, the wood grain of the shell can be seen from under the wrap.

When I first started collecting MIJ kits most of us knew of two stencil makers Star and Pearl. Since then Hoshino K. came to light, as another major builder. then there is also though on a much smaller scale of production, both Yamamoto and Sakae.

Sorry for the info that was already posted I somehow missed Marc's post

So you say Yamamoto made Norma's?

That's interesting to know, since I thought my Norma kit was likely made by Hoshino. But it does have the Gretsch hardware on it, and since none of the Big 3 copied Gretsch, and Yamamoto did, stands to reason he made them. Interesting stuff!

Any idea what happened to Mr. Yamamoto? Did he eventually merge with Tama, Pearl or Yamaha or did he just fade away?

Sorry to hijack the thread!