Hi,

Yeah, but...the shells aren't wood.

They're a composite of thin wood veneers and glue. Radio Frequency cured Urea Formaldehyde (if they had that technology back then) or something else. Just like plywood...it's not going to behave like solid timber.

Sure, solid timber changes. As you know timber's cellular construction means it's like a sponge, sucking in moisture depending on humidity. Air dried timber, no matter how long it's been sitting around is only ever going to get down to a moisture level of about 12-14%...kiln dried starts out at about 7% and and starts to move back up again with the moisture from it's surrounds no matter how it is finished.

You're right, maybe they are getting better with age as the veneers are pretty thick and they are changing for the better. As to how long it takes who knows. They are very inconsistent though aren't they?

The shells are so badly put together...gaps in veneers, heads don't seat on the shell because it's binding on the wrap...edges are all over the place and yet some sound pretty good even with their original battered 40+ year old bearing edges etc.

After restoring a few of these kits, what i notice is you can get a good sound out of the bass drums and floor toms but generally the small toms sound like ass no matter what.

Jim, I've had extraordinary success with the small toms, in fact I've even done side by side comparisons with my Slingerland maple toms. They compare very well, especially the 8x12s. All you have to do is cut a good double 45 bearing edge and make sure you have them tuned down low. Luan is very responsive in the lower registers.

Oh and most importantly, never use those damned 60's spade mounts. Luan is a very light shell, the heavy huge hunk of iron glommed onto the side just sucks out all the resonance. Try an isolation mount if you can. You will be amazed at the difference. How big a difference? Try this on for size. I've timed the resonance in comparison tests. With ISO mounts, 9 seconds, almost the same as my Slingies (9.5 seconds) I kid you not. With 60's spade mounts, same drum, 2 seconds. How's that for a difference! Dont take my word for it, try it yourself if you can. You can get a decent ISO mount from drumfactorydirect.com for about $25.

The obvious caveat of course is that you do need to start out with a good one, if they are way out of round they're probably hopeless. BTW, nobody makes solid wood drums anymore, and very few ever did. They're all plywood of one kind or another. It's very hard to find trees big enough these days. I know there was a company up in Oregon making them for a while, but they went out of business because they could not find big enough timber at a cost effective price.

Agreed about the moisture, but that really has nothing to do with curing one way or another. Moisture comes and goes, but the oils are what absorb vibration i.e. resonance. That's why oil is used in shock absorbers. Physics does not change simply because the oil is held in the pores of a piece of wood, even wood veneer rather than a steel cylinder. It's still oil, and it still absorbs vibration. But unlike moisture, once the oils evaporate, they never come back.

The oilier the wood, the more dramatic that change over time will be. Since Luan is a pretty oily wood when it's green, obviously it has more potential to change over time. I just don't know how much time that is.

I think you'd need to quantify what "cured" actually entails before you get anything more than wishful thinking...

Ie. Density increase?

Hardness increase?

"spring-i-er"? (internal shell tension, or less)?

Years of playing = resonant "settling" (like seasoning in headphones)?

Or moar unicorn?

Fair point, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is at what point the wood reaches its ultimate stability. The point at which any chemical changes are complete. In this particular wood, that manifests itself as a hardening of the wood and a drying of the oils certainly. One might fairly assume that could include tightening of the pores i.e. density increase, but I have no direct evidence of that, that is speculation.

I'll throw my 2 cents in here if ya'll don't mind.

I'm not convinced the improvement in sound is just all about the wood curing.

I'm sure that the evaporation of inherent oils in the wood and the stabilizing of the wood pores contribute, but I submit here that the decades of playing may be a factor as well.

I have read that the fundamental note that is formed in the shell at the time of manufacture becomes more pronounced as the shell ages AND is played. That the structure of the wood actually aligns itself to accentuate this note.

I pose the question, would a drum stored away since the 60's and never played sound as sweet as one that has been well maintained but played alot?

One of the reasons that MIJ drums sounded crappy in the 60's , is because they were crappy. There was no intent on the part of the makers to make good drums. The intent was to just make drums and flood the market with them. Large profits, come from mass sales of cheap goods. Just ask Walmart. Flash forward a few years and those mass profits were applied to a different paradigm.The attempt to actually engineer the drums to a higher level began around 1972, more or less. So, in discussing MIJ drums a clarification has to be made about the era. I would make a division between the thin re-ringed shell versions and the thick straight-thru shell versions, with the latter heralding the attempt to attract drummers, not just kids.

Many other aspects of the kits were cheaply designed , beyond the shells. The metals were soft and full of impurities. White metal molded parts would split open and reveal huge air bubbles in the molding. The chrome was usually straight onto mild steel, with crude polishing, showing grinder marks. Threads were loose and sloppy and the dreadfull factory supplied heads, would show permanent dents after only a few playings. The snare wires would bend and deform, in a stiff wind. Throwoffs would self destruct. Cymbals were of the D.I.Y. variety, made to be hammered into some form of shape by the owners sticks.

If you separate the drums themselves, away from the useless drum kit in total, flash forward again, a few decades and attend to them as though you were salvaging a boat---------actually, supplying them with bearing edges,real drum heads,snarewires that work , a throwoff that doesn't vibrate to pieces, fill the porous wood with wood filler, varnish , resin, glue,epoxy, fibreglass, cement or whatever..... what a surprise! They sound better. Wall panelling wood, carrying a 40% glue content, that was used for everything out of Japan from doors that were lighter than their hinges, to recipe boxes, doesn't actually age into gracefullness, like a handcarved maple violin back or a solid maple drumshell does ---it's a nice comfy myth but go elsewhere for the reasons why those drums sound better than they did when just unpacked.

LOL. Some truth here to be sure.

There you go again, nice try, but we are not talking about wall panelling wood with a 40% glue content. Very far from it. We are talking about multi layer plywood made from Luan wood. It has no more and no less glue than any other multi layered plywood used to build drums. Yes the construction of SOME of those old drums was awful. But we are not talking about construction techniques, we are talking about actual Luan plywood.

And like all woods it changes character over time. That is fact, 40% glue content, that's hyperbole. There is a difference.

I'll bite... Modern drum heads! Ever find an original 60s/70s MIJ head? Seems to me those were never going to stay in tune, no matter what. Put any make or model current production drum head on and it will be an immediate improvement over the sound of these drums when they were first unpacked.

Yes, a little smoothing of the bearing edges probably helps a bit (although I DO NOT condone the suggestion of cutting double 45 edges) and snare beds probably need to be checked out and maybe attended to, but I have found the main thing is to fit these shells with heads that can be tuned.

A close second in getting these things to sound their best is maintenance of the t-rods and lugs/inserts. If they are caked with grime or rust, they are not going to tension evenly and therefore will not tune up correctly. After they are clean and free of rust/debris, lubricate the end of the t-rod with a drop of 3-in-1 oil and you should find that these shells will tune up surprisingly well!

I'm with Calfskin. They were never built to be Great Drums. They were profit based and very little more. Cure? Nope. Just old cheap drums that could sound good with some work ... maybe, depending on the builder, the shells, and the hardware. There's just way too much "WANT" from people these days. It seems like many just really "want" these old MIJs to take hold and move outta the Rodney Dangerfield arena of No Respect. I'm not holding my breath on this one.