[COLOR="Navy"]Well, I'm afraid you simply need the part - e.g., watch Ebay, vintage shows, or contact one of the vintage dealers directly, etc. Slapshots are available out there.

The plastic slides do show up broken from time to time, but usually it's an issue of unintentional abuse contributing. Being hard plastic with some element of brittleness, the slide can crack if subjected to a sharp blow, such as a drop or hard side shot. Overall the essential Slingerland Slapshot design has been time tested, having been copied by most marching drum manufacturers after Niles went under.

BTW - the eBay "Magnum" you point out is not an original Niles drum. There is no badge and the shell is wrong. At some point in the past, original brass-plated Niles Magnum snare hardware was put on a non-Slingerland shell. [/COLOR]

The TDR strainer will fit the same holes as the slap shot...it will look and work better!

[COLOR="Navy"]Right the TDR is a great replacement.

Re-reading my earlier entry, I see I need to follow up. While the essential aspects of the Slapshot design became a sort of de facto standard for marching drums after Slingerland went out of business in 1986, the original Slingerland design had the unquestionable weak link of the plastic slider part that 8EZslings refers to. While this hard plastic part worked great for many years, now we are seeing plastic fatigue - with age, heat, cold and drying, this particular plastic formulation becomes brittle, and it basically can just crack and break apart. It looks like about 20 years is all this plastic part can take. I've personally just in the past month seen five 25-year old Slapshots that were working perfectly a month ago, have their plastic sliders crack. Almost seems like a timer going off.

A personal view of mine has always been that plastic - of any kind - just does not belong on a snare drum strainer. Slingerland chose it for its combination of strength, its inherent lubricious nature, and its smooth quiet action. But plastic just does not last forever as a structural element.

I am looking into a cost-effective replacement part to help get all those Slapshots going again.[/COLOR]

Dr CJW,

I have stayed diligently on the hunt for a replacement Slapshot since my original post.

I totally agree with your line of thinking that the plastic 'expires' - for lack of a better word - over time. I say this after watching several more great looking drums go by (up for sale) with the 'sagging' strainer - the first visual clue that something is amiss.

Several TDR drums have been on EBay with Yamaha's version of the assembly replacing the Slapshots recently. I am unsure if they have matching hole spacing.

A silver and gold TDR strainer is indeed the replacement throw-off on my 8x14 Silver Silk (serial 473,XXX).

The 8x14 Silver Sparkle Magnum (serial 585,500) is mint, mint, mint... except for that busted plastic insert - hence it hasn't seen any playtime since purchased. I'm thinking, that's why its in such good shape - the throw busted and it sat in a case!

Really(!) nice brass Magnum up for auction at the moment:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Slingerland-8x14-Brass-Snare_W0QQitemZ220041832912QQihZ012QQcategoryZ64436QQtcZphotoQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Anxiously awaiting your next article.

cheers