I recently heard a story about someone needing to yellow some hoop inlays, so they took them to the local bar and left them for a few months.

That did the trick....

David

Ciggy smoke it yellows anything...if you are gigging them you have little choice but i have mine in a cig free room when at home and if you keep a goodwax finish on them and clean them after gigs where smoking was going on they stay nice and white...

In an earlier post on restoring the shine to vintage wrap, the following link was referenced:

http://vintagesnaredrums.com/how_to_vintage_snare.html

In this article there was mention of a particular method of cleaning WMP wrap, but it stopped there with no detail included as to what the process actually was. Can anyone fill in that blank?

Thanks, Chuck

I can attest to the yellowing caused by the sun's rays. My uncle's 1950's WMP Kent kit sat in a relatively-sunny corner of my parents' basement for decades. No cigar/cigarette smoking was present. Now, the top portions of the WMP on the bass drum that sat in the sun are yellowed the heaviest. The bottom of the bass drum and parts of the snare and tom that were not usually in direct sunlight are not quite as yellowed. The bottom of the bass drum actually looks pretty clean and mostly yellow-free. I tried cleaning the shells up a little when I put the kit back together a few months back but the yellowing is not going to turn back to WMP anytime soon. :)

Light makes WMP yellow, natural or man made. Cigarette smoke, general pollution from cars, trucks, kitchens, BBQs, along with human fluids (and possibly gases) and other cr@p in the air just make them dirty.

I've had a few kits from the 60's, stored for 30 years that were covered in, well... brown, sticky fluff, once cleaned off, there was a new kit underneath, quite a protective layer!