Nobody will take a stab at this without some pic's of the kit... Needed for proper ID of the model kit... and to assess the current condition...

Post some pic's up and you will get some response...

Cheers

John

I have the shell of an 18" Luddy FT Blue & Olive with exactly the same coloured interior - that speckly bluish reverse-universe look... Did Tama copy Ludwig or did Ludwig copy Tama? Maybe everyone copied each other, which seems much more plausible. In some respects, anyway...

Those are Tama Imperialstars. For a period during the 70's & 80's a lot of companies used the Zola coating inside the shells. I think the Imperialstars were the first, but I'm not 100% on who may have copied who. From the serial numbers your kit dates to the 1970's. By the 80's they placed the year before the serial number. So my 1984 kit has 84-xxxxx. Great sounding drums, good beefy low end.

Value wise with these drums is difficult. They produced so many, and for such a good number of years that they aren't really rare, or crazy sought after. Another issue is that in recent years Tama renamed their lower line of drums with the Imperialstar name. So unfortunately many young drummers see the name and think " cheap ", when in reality these were one of Tama's high end drums, only surpassed by the Superstars until the 1980's when they came out with Artstars and Granstars.

I'd respectfully say $200-$400 for those. They look to be in really good condition. Aside what I mentioned above, the other down side is the single headed toms. A lot of guys prefer double headed toms, so the single heads don't generally command as much. I paid $140 for my kit a few years back, but the wrap on mine was really beat up. I'd say do a search in your area and see if anyone else is also selling Vintage Imperialstars and what they are asking for them.

Hmm? Concert rack toms and a floor tom with a bottom head. Was that common for the time?

tris66 it actually was during the 1970's. I've seen many Tama kits with concert rack toms and double headed floor toms. Far as I know, Tama didn't make any single headed floor toms with the exception of the gong floor toms. I know the concert toms went up to 16", but was still mounted on a stand.

[ame]http://www.drumarchive.com/tama/Tama1970.pdf[/ame]

You'll notice on the cover photo that his rack toms are single headed and the floor tom clearly has a bottom rim and lugs.

Yes it was the norm for Tama & for Pearl too... all of the Pearl Dyna kits had multi array concert toms and Double headed FT's.

(Would say that those drums have been part of a larger kit probably a "Saturn" model kit that has been split up)..

Cheers

John

I like 70s Tama kits or really any Tama kit. Top quality drums at any price point. Stewart Copeland played and recorded with Imperialstars early on with the Police. I've heard that he later played a Superstar kit and went back to using the Imperialstars because he favored them.

Definetly Tama Imperialstar from the 70s-80s period! If it were a Fibrestar the Shells would be made out of fibreglass!

These Shells are Mahagoni with zola coating like it was the norm at TAMA these days. Same with the floortoms-they were double headed !

Value, i would also say from 200$-to maybe 300$! It´s like ARCHxANGEL already said concert Tom sets don´t raise the same value as a normal kit! But i still think they sound class, especially Imperialstar and Fibrestar kits!!!

regards

Christian

I've been using 12" & 14" Imperialstar toms (with a mongrel BD I built from an unknown MIJ shell) and I reckon they're the best sounding toms I've had! Makes me wonder why they started calling Imperialstar 'low end', when they are serious quality drums!