It's a real stunner, BUZZ .... !!!!

Buzz - I'm a retired graphic artist and I'm blown away every time I see the cool graphics your wife created for the bass drum heads. Just great stuff that looks cool beans on the drum heads. Classy.

Gorgeous kit. Yes Sir

John

PS - Hey, Buzz... is that red glass or red sparkle? Man it looks like red glass in the photo. I'm such a sucker for red glass.

John

John,

My wife will be pleased to hear that. She started out college as an art major, but became discouraged with her professors, and decided to become a chemist (she's a PhD now).

The seller I bought the kit from described it as a glass finish, but I am pretty sure it's just a sparkle, but that comes with a caveat: the wrap is 2 plies. The top ply is red sparkle and the bottom ply is blue sparkle. I did some research and came up with this...

The 1964 Ludwig catalog mentions a "Multi-Sparkle" pearl option that was offered at no extra charge. Basically, Ludwig would let you combine 2 of the 5 available wraps. You would only need to specifiy which colors you wanted on the "outer" and "inner" wraps.

My WFL kit is a '56, which is almost a decade before this catalog. But I bet the Multi-Sparkle was an unpublished option that the dealers knew about for years.

Buzz- you'll be able to tell if it's glass or sparkle with one quick look. If all the sparkly thingy's are -uniform- then it's Red Sparkle, if all the shiny thingy's are irregular, it's crushed glass. The glass glitter is much more 'sparkly' too. It has some depth to it whereas the red sparkle looks flat, 2 dimensional.

That 2-sided stuff is what I had on my George Way bass drum - couldn't match it even with computer swatches. I gave up and rewrapped the entire kit. You cannot match that look (of the 2-sided stuff) with any one-sided modern wrap.

John

Here's the thing: the sparkles are not uniform, the sparkles really do "pop", and overall, the wrap does look like it has a lot of depth. But I have had glass wraps before on kits (including a blue glass RB set). Those wraps had a specific texture to them, like you could feel the chunks of glass in the wrap. The WFL wrap is very smooth, like the pieces of glass are merely slivers.

Also, I have been corrected on Ludwig's Multi-Sparkle option. It was merely 2 different wraps on the exterior of the drum in a 3-band stripe pattern.

If that is a two-sided wrap, they used -glass- in those, not sparkles. That's why I mentioned how deep the finish looks. The drums they used that wrap on always appear darker, deeper than other wraps. The drums they used the blue side on took on a deep, dark blue because of the bleed from the red underneath. Some of those drums cured out almost purple looking. Ditto for the drums that used the red outside. Because of the blue underneath, the red is dark, almost blood red. But it's glass for sure if it's the two-sided stuff. Danmar made it and the drum companies scooped it up because they could get two useful colors out of one lot of wrap. Turns out the manufacturing process is toxic, that's why it was discontinued. Don't worry about it now, whatever toxic out-gassing that vinyl was going to do, it did it decades ago. Probably completely stable and inert at this point. But a gorgeous, rich wrap nonetheless.

John