I've not seen any difference in Ludwig red sparkle since they went to a glitter wrap in the later 1950's.

Great to know! thanks

There may be slight variations between different batches of any wrap but the red sparkle has always been pretty consistent. There's a red sparkle Rocker bass on ebay right now at a decent price.

That's the one I was looking at :) Not sure if I should pull the trigger on that or try to match it a re ring kick drum that would match better (sound wise).

I think the only difference now would be how it's faded. That really wouldn't matter

to me though. As long it was the same type of red sparkle, which is usually the case.

Good luck in your search !

Given the way bass drums are typically tuned I doubt it would matter much, unless you actually want to play it wide open...and even then I'm not sure how much difference there would be. The standard type smooth lugs can be swapped out for classic style (same hole pattern).

That's what I was thinking. I have a rocker kit and the kick sounds great! I got a keystone shell pretty cheap with 12 classic lugs I could use on the kick. Would just need 4 more to complete it :)

I have a blue /olive badge 16" Ludwig floor tom with a white painted interior

The drum is red sparkle and not faded but is more of a darker ruby shade

The flake size in the sparkle pattern is very small in comparison to my keystone red sparkle club date project ..which is lighter almost candy apple shade with a generous sized flake

So I think there may have been this other ruby shade of red out there as well??

There was a different version of red Sparkle used on the Standard series drums. That was called "Red Mist" and did have a smaller flake size as well as the wrap being thinner overall. I'm not sure of how much variation there may have been in the overall color though as I've heard of people mixing these drums in with regular red sparkle Ludwigs with no glaring difference. As I mentioned above, different batches of wrap can have a slightly different hue. Ludwig also sourced their wraps from more than one supplier through the years so there could be some variance there as well. Or maybe it was just something Ludwig tried at some point. Lot's of oddities crop up when dealing with Ludwig. Overall their sparkle colors remained pretty consistent though. Unlike Slingerland who used three or more shades of blue and at least two shades of red sparkle through the years.