[COLOR="DarkRed"]Hola.
Just a couple of my latest renovations/upgrades....keeps me off the street, y'know ?
Let's face it...the coolest thing about old '60's Japanese stencil drums are their finishes...and hardware, sometimes.
So, I tend to grab these when I see 'em, because with a little work, they make quite decent drums. And their vintage MOJO is ....irrefutable Cool1
So, my basic renovation on these is along the lines of recutting the (usually factory-rough) bearing edges from soft roundovers to a 45 degree bevel with small outside roundover....improving the snare beds which usually suck if they exist at all...and then disassembling doing a thorough cleaning of shell and hardware. Sometimes I need to replace a throwoff...but fortunately not in these instances.
New edges plus a careful choice of heads (typically a head which can produce a dry tone and cut back on ringing) and the engaging of the stock head muffler...usually makes these purrrr quite nicely.
On the b/w onyx one...I actually replaced the badly pitted Japanese-fake-Slingerland lugs with bona-fide vintage real-Slingerland lugs.
Another thing which has been suggested is polyurethaning the interiors of the shells to increase the hardness of the interior surfaces. I have not tried this yet (typically I would fine-sand and apply tung oil to an interior face...but old '60's luan is VERY difficult to sand down to a smooth finish; and tung oil is very penetrating so I would have concerns on thin 1 or 3-ply luan shells).[/COLOR]
