[COLOR="DarkRed"]O-KAAAAAAAAY.... so, this started long long ago, I think over a year ago actually. By a fluke I found this 3-pc. set of Rogers Cleveland drums, Mardi-Gras wrap, being sold by a guy in the backwoods of Sonoma county. His friend (get this) had been a street performer and CLOWN...and he had 2 drum sets: a Slingy WMP Radio King late '40's, and this Rogers Cleveland Mardi Gras kit. He, ahem, used the Mardi-Gras...for his CLOWN act.
OK, so the guy went back to college...and the seller (his friend) was selling all of his drum stuff for him. These have B & B lugs...but half were cracked (not a bad ratio, actually....I was fortunate to be able to save half.
He also had a trunk full of all the original swivo hardware. The snare, however, wasn't there :( But she had the original tall-boy hoops, all the swivo stuff, the whole nine yards. All orig. stuff except: only the lower half of the cymbal l-arm is rogers, the upper half is a perfectly-fitting Japanese copy.
Shells needed cleaning, hardware stripped and de-rusted, then pitting and such removed with steel wool. Then I had to have a machinist untwist the hex arm for the rack tom....it was the long version...too pricey to find a replacement.
I decided for this one, I had to bite the bullet and go for it:
I took the remaining uncracked B & B's, reinforced the insides with cold weld putty per instructions on the ROF....and moved them all to the RES side of the drums.
I then (gulp) ponied up for Jim Petty's JP2 CReations steel B & B reproduction lugs. OOH ! And....OUCH ! ($20 a shot...just for the casings). I'll let you do the math....
I ordered & paid for 'em on Thanksgiving 2008. They trickled in, slowly, bit by bit...all the way until April 2009. I gotta say...it was frustrating....BUT...they are stellar reproductions.....just fabulous.
THEN....after a year-plus of my "Mardi-Gras in Musical Instruments" saved search on eFlay....there it was. A snare drum. It didn't come cheap, either...and it was an English Rogers. Of interest is...there's less "confetti" in the English version of the wrap. But, it is immaculate and the lugs are perfect. So, that gave me the complete kit.
(I know, I know, the hoop inlays need to be silver sparkle, not red. I'll get to that...sometime ;) ).
Never again will I ever invest such funds and time into a kit.....but....this is sort of a one-time kit, too.
20/12/16/14s[/COLOR]
