Hello VDF Members,
A friend of my family asked me to help him restore a 3 piece Leedy & Ludwig kit. He thought they were from the 1940’s and purchased them about 13 years ago for $200. The 14x22 bass drum, 16x16 floor tom and 9x13 small toms, all covered in sparkling gold with red blotches peeking through.
The interiors were factory white, in great shape, each sporting a date stamp 5101. (January 1951?) I had an opportunity to play them first and they sounded great even though they had well-worn Remo coated ambassador batter heads and clear ambassador reso heads.
I only had time to disassemble and clean the toms; I hope to return this weekend, weather permitting, to clean and polish the bass drum. All 28 lugs had the usual exterior rick pinning and corrosion on the inter face of the lugs at the mounting threads. All 56 screws had rust from the middle of the shaft to the collar but the first half of the screw looked new. The 13” lugs had steel springs holding the lug nut in place while the floor tom lugs had copper springs. The half of the ratchet mounting bracket (#7728) was corrosion free while all three floor tom brackets were very rusted with chrome flaking off.
