Beautiful, man....

Are they from '78 or so?

What's the shell lay-up?

Will regular lugs mount up to make them playable for 'ya?

Cool....

Shells are three plys, looks like maple inside, the 12" is the ony one with re-rings, why you ask? well ?? um Ill get back to later on that. Have never heard an exact year but mid 70s I think. Hole spacing for the lugs is 2 1/4" on center. I have been told I can use different lugs but I would need 30 of them. I might get them one day and change them out. Fishwaltz has been doing research on the low line Ludwig drums, he knows a ton more than I do.

Jeff C

I was reading in the Cook Ludwig book about the Combo series in '78 using up older 3-ply shells too.

Man, they prolly sound great, or could.....

That finish really does it for me, very pretty imho.

Congrats !!

I believe those are pretty rare birds. I think Bermuda has a set of those.

Yes Bermuda does have a set of them. His are almost the same as mine. His tom has two mufflers, one on top and one on bottom. Here is a link to his very well done web page

http://www.bermudaschwartz.com/edu/index.html

They are pretty rare I guess and thats why I am not jumbing into changing out the lugs. I didnt even remove them when I cleaned them up. If I do change I will keep the plastic ones in a safe! I got these from a guy who got them from his church. I am the third owner you could say.

Jeff

Hi Jeff & Kev;

The 'Educator' line is a real enigma. There are two thoughts about them, and both are pretty much the same. The most prevalent is just what you said about attempting to compete with the MIJ stuff, kind of a lower level 'Standard' kit or Club Date. The second is that this line was offered mostly to organizations (churches?) and schools, hence the name.

I REALLY don't have any ducks in a row to give an educated answer on 'Educator' line stuff yet (little play on words there, very tiny). Since they seem to be the rarest thing going, I'm holding off on them while I glean info on Rockers I and II, Combo's and S/L line stuff, hoping to pick up a bit of info about them at the same time. I have, but not much. I honestly don't think they were made for more than one or two years, if that. Maybe even less. When I finish up with the Rocker quest (mostly defining hardware) and the elusive S/L line, then it's the Combo's Educator's.

Bit of a side note about the S/L line; some had classic lugs, some had standard lugs. Both were cataloged in the same year, on the same page. I'm not sure if you could choose, it didn't mention it. See the 1984 catalog starting at page 21.

My theory about them is that they were built from all the odds and ends, shells and hardware. They always were covered in indestructible maple Cortex wrap and were most-often seen in "younger kid" schools' music rooms. They are rare...probably sound great...but are mostly just enigmatic.

i can speak a little to the plastic lugs. i have a near mint set of ludwig vistalite combos that still had the original plastic lugs. i was missing some on the bass. took me years to find some. put the kit all together recently and started playing it. very little tension on the rods. had a few start breaking right away. decided to put the lugs up and keep them but replaced them with metal classic lugs. so yeah, they do crack easily. love the kit by the way!

mike

I have the same theory, especially the 'odds and ends' stuff.