Once again I'll post: "WHO CARES"? Until about the mid 1970s, we bought American-made and European-made drums that were made of wood. Maybe sometimes we knew what kind of woods were used to make our drums. But, darn few of us knew or cared what kind of wood was used as long as it was not the horrible Luan mahogany used for the cheap Asian firewood drums.Apparently, some us do care about which wood varieties are part of the drums. For me, a drum either sounds good or not as good as I would prefer irrespective of the woods in plies. .
It's called "reverse engineering"....meaning that, back in those days, as you say, no one cared about things like the wood or the rims, etc. We just picked the brand of drums we liked. Sometimes, we were limited in our choices by which brands were even available in a particular region. In those days, we assumed that American-made products were better than Asian-made stuff and no one questioned any of it.
BUT....
...NOW, a whole new perspective on "what makes a vintage drum different from a modern drum" and there has been a TON of research and development in areas of drum design and construction that simply didn't exist back then. Now, drummers want to know these things. They want to compare old VS new or era VS era and so on.
Bottom line for me is that IF anyone out there can hear the difference between a mahogany/poplar/mahogany layup and a maple/poplar/maple layup, then your hearing is much better than mine! Still, for whatever reason, some people prefer one or the other.
Also, sometimes, it's helpful to know the veneer layups to help nail down a possible date -or to explain why some drums in a kit do/don't have the same layup -say, in the case of a rewrapped kit....That kind of stuff can be fun for those who like to solve mysteries. It doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with the sound.
