As a former owner of both Camco and Rogers sets I think it would interesting to re-edge a Rogers with the Camco profile. Both brands have excellent resonance, that rivals modern drums, but their own "tone" due to their Jasper vs Keller shells and bearing edge profiles.

As a former owner of both Camco and Rogers sets I think it would interesting to re-edge a Rogers with the Camco profile. Both brands have excellent resonance, that rivals modern drums, but their own "tone" due to their Jasper vs Keller shells and bearing edge profiles.

...isn't that pretty much what Sam Bacco was doing with the later issue Nashville made Slingerland drums?

Just buy an LA set of Camco drums!

I've currently got three Camco kits and have had two others previously. Camcos were made at three different locations - Oaklawn, Chanute and Los Angeles. Collectors tend to have a real thing about the Oaklawn drums over the others but I've had kits from all locations and they're all great but the Oaklawns have that more classic 60s sound. The LAs were the classic 70s studio drum and you'll hear them on more records from that period than you'll realise. Notable for having considerably under-sized shells which gave the toms an almost timpani-like quality. Camco were always the smallest of the US manufacturers and, despite having been responsible for some genuine innovations, they never really cracked the lucrative rock market (but the jazzers loved 'em) and couldn't withstand the Japanese influx with their superior stands and fittings for much lower prices (the problem for all the US manufacturers at the time). In 1978, after a few different owners, they eventually sold the toolings to the fledgling Drum Workshop (who weren't even making drums at the time) and the name and some other elements (including their pedal design) to Tama which is why you will often seen the very fine Camco by Tama bass drum pedals. Tama also had a stab at making "TAMACamco" drums which wasn't really a success despite the drums being pretty OK (though not very collectable in today's market) and they briefly had Elvin Jones as an endorser. Camco originally came from the George Way Drum Company, George Way being one of the greatest innovators of 20th century drum manufacture (he's the guy who came up with the distinctive turret lugs amongst many other things).Very, very early DW (up until maybe the mid-1980s) bear a slight resemblance to LA Camcos but this is long before DW became a big name in drum world so these are probably rarer than Camcos.I'm sure others can add some stuff. Here's one of mine (an Oaklawn re-wrap).

> ... how hard could it be to replicate a big round over edge?Three years ago I purchased a raw NOS 4-ply Oaklawn shell from the Hollywood Drum Shop on ebay. It was a raw 16" x 16" 4-ply Jasper shell that was bought decades ago by the owner of the drum shop. The shell was unfinished, no wrap/finish and no bearing edges. I sent a vintage 13" Oaklawn rack tom (as a model) along with the raw floor tom shell to Gary, the drum tech over at Precision, so he could reproduce the bearing edge -exactly- on the NOS floor tom shell. He did a remarkable job and matched it perfectly to the factory edge on the vintage rack tom, so it is do-able. 4-ply Oaklawn Camco drums sound amazing and I'm certain the unique bearing edges are largely responsible for producing the incredibly warm and resonant sound that comes from these wonderful tubs. I love my Camco's.John

> it seems like the major drum shops would produce that as a standard offering bearing edge cut. There is a thread at DFO from two years ago when I completed my Camco kit where I said (almost word for word,) what you just wrote. The Camco bearing edges 'should be' industry standard. Maybe there is something proprietary going on. Geo. Way created a bunch of new patents with his designs and innovations. Maybe the bearing edge profile is one of them. Who knows?John