Just took delivery of a nice vintage 12x15 WMP Ludwig marcher shell. Pretty badly yellowed and it had an odd gouge where it looks like someone started a hole (with an auger bit) and then thought better before they got all the way through. No matter, my intent all along has been to strip, fill and recover.

I'm kind of a noob at this so this inexpensive (20 bucks) shell satisfied a couple of needs; 1) right size for a weirdo jazz size kit I'm cobbling together (gonna be the floor tom) and 2) (again) inexpensive shell for a DYI.

So I get the thing and notice a couple of things right away.

- the wrap came off like a dream but I found it actually dovetailed deep into the ply so I very carefully trimmed it off at the seam. No problems.

- the outer ply appears to be a really nice mahogany

- the interior retains its factory white paint but it is undated. the few other Luddies I've had were all date stamped

- on that interior there are the hand written script initials "RL" just below the breather hole.

This shell has turned out to be really a lot nicer than I expected. I'm still going to fill all the holes (cork, then epoxy skim) and recover in BDP to match a new (to me) 14x20 Rogers Mercury BD I recently snagged. This Luddy marcher was a 16 lugger. So now I'm thinkin I'll ship it off to Precission to recut the edges and drill it out for 8 Rogers beaver snare lugs I've got. Set it up like a deep Tower tom. The thing is oh-so-thin so my guess is it'll sound super warm and mellow.

Anyone know anything about these old Ludwig marchers and how they stack up as smaller floor toms?

As ever, thanks to the experts.