&Hey folks,
Haven't posted in a few years and decided to reinstate my profile because I need some help identifying a 12x8 70s era Ludwig tom. Here's the back story.
I was shopping around on Reverb.com for a player Ludwig 12x8 that i was planning to restore and rewrap for a downbeat gigging kit that is made up of orphans from different eras. I found this 70s white marine pearl tom and in my excited haste, I pulled the trigger on it without reading the full description. My fault. It turns out what originally looks to be like a converted concert tom. The only evidence I have of this is from the seller's description that was on the Reverb ad, and the fact that it has an extra 4 holes from what looks like a Ludwig concert tom clip mount. I found an old thread up here last week while researching info on converted concert toms, and found out some interesting things about 70s era Ludwig concert toms. "Bermuda" Schwartz stated that Ludwig made concert toms with both bearing edges (i didn't know that), and that they only used mini classic lugs. But here's what makes my alleged concert tom so strange, to me at least.

My tom has large classic lugs and they look to be factory installed, but the other dilemma is that the bottom/reso lugs are slightly misaligned or off centered, which is another bit of info I found that wasn't unheard of from Ludwig's quality control at that time. In short, it was not uncommon to have misaligned lugs both in the 60s and 70s, due to Ludwig's slack on customer order demand. Another thing to point out isbthat all lugs have the same type of screws, which are hex and have no screw driver head. Anyone please feel free to correct me on any of this information, as I'm just finding all this out from this, and other forums.

Now my questions to the Ludwig experts are these : Is my drum a converted concert tom, or a mount modified, sub par quality control era Ludwig double headed tom ? I'm probably going to get rid of it anyway, as those off centered lugs are driving my drum OCD crazy Of course any and all help is much appreciated. I will attempt to post some pics for you guys to inspect the drum yourself, but please forgive me if they don't come out properly. Oh, and if anyone has a 70s blue sparkle 12x8 tom that needs a home, I'm your guy !

Thanks to all !

Rob

Not sure exactly what's up with the tom, but whether double or single-headed, it should have had the smaller lugs on it. Ludwig's lug line was drawn between 12 and 13" toms, so that 12" is an oddity. (In a concert tom set, all of the lugs were smaller, from 6-16".)

Given the extra mount holes, yours might be a special order concert tom with large lugs, but Ludwig didn't do much custom work at that time except possibly for one of their artists.

Some 12" toms got large classic lugs. I bought a new set of 6 ply thermogloss maple concert toms in 6" through 12" around '80 and the 12" had large lugs. I have also seen pictures of the occasional large lug 12" double headed tom but they were mostly in the 6ply era.


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Page 15 of the 1980 catalog shows a big beat kit with a large lug 12" double headed tom.


Also as far as the top lugs not lining up with the bottom lugs, I don't know how that would be possible from the factory.



The jigs they used to drill lugs had the holes for the tom and bottom lugs and they were perfectly in line. They had two jigs that I am aware of. One had a turntable with notches for the metal assembly that had the drilling jigs, top and bottom for the lugs. The operator would push a foot pedal to rotate to the next location and all of the holes were drilled with an electric hand drill. The other was a similar machine but much larger with a larger turntable mounted vertically. The shell would be rotated into position and a drill press with four drill bits would drill all of the holes at once. Then the turntable was rotated to the next notch and the process repeated until the entire shell had been drilled. In both cases all four hole were aligned by the jig.


My only thought would be it could be possible that Ludwig occasionally converted single headed drums that has already been made to fill an order. This would only be possible before they added the aluminum protective ring on the bottom edge.


The most likely scenario is that one of the previous owners modified the drum to be double headed and it just happened to be one of the odd duck large lug concert toms.

Love the RUSH photos in the background of that pic

Originally Posted by MPC

Love the RUSH photos in the background of that pic

Not hard to figure out why I bought a set of 6" -12" concert toms...


That was a very large poster that any serious Rush fan would have had on their wall.

I sit corrected on the 12" lugs, first I'm hearing of the larger lugs!

Originally Posted by bermuda

I sit corrected on the 12" lugs, first I'm hearing of the larger lugs!

I don't think they are that common but it's Ludwig so anything is possible. I currently have a 12" three ply Ludwig concert tom and it has small lugs as would be expected.


The lug size on 12" drums seems to have become more murky as you go into the 80's a lot of the catalog pictures of 12" power toms appear to show them with the large lugs.