You wont be able to do a whole lot about the fadeing, it proves the vintage anyway !!

I just read the entire 1957/58 catalogue and alot of time and expertise went into those drums back then. They shaved and made their own heads, made the cymbals in factory, heavily chromed everything in factory, hand formed the shells before the ovens and so much more. Lots of options were availible on request.

Your bass has six lugs per side and four spirs..correct ?

Is it the teardrop kind or the long rod type ?

If you want to learn about them,...on the sonor museum site, the entire cat. is avialible.

Do you have the wood calf rings or the metal chromed ones ?

Oddball,

Its the "Melodie" from the 1957 catalog.

The bass drum is the long rods type, which actually makes it a whole lot easier to use a 22 head. The Bass drum hoops are wood, but they are out of the round. I may replace them with the Gibralter chrome hoops and transfer the WMP inlays. Dual spurs, not the 4. Man, 4 Spurs was really overkill in 1958!!

You can see by looking at the shells how much supreme QUALITY went into these drums. Nice, thick wood. They were made to last, thats for sure.

My set is "complete" except a few claws on the tom tom, the tom tom "arm" that goes into the bass drum, and a muffler knob. It actually still has the cymbal arm that goes on the bass drum!!

All the hardware could really use a rechrome, tho. I'll have to look into that as well.

Heres the pic of it from the 1958 Catalog:

Talk to Calf and Mikey777 maybe Mikey has the parts and Calf can say if the hoops can be brought back to tolerence !!

Yes, I'll have to see if he has a tom tom arm that will fit. I might be able to use a MIJ arm of some kind.

Ok, here are some pics I just took. From what I can see these will look 1,000X better after they have been worked on a little. The Sonor badge is intact on all 3 drums.

I'm definetly getting shiny new single flange rims from Drum factory for the snare and tom.

Note the cracks in the WMP finish on the bass. My sense is that these can be glued down easily.

See the Sonor badge on the bass? I took a little polish and some elbow grease to just that little spot. Its also missing one muffler assembly, as you can see by the gaping hole right above the Sonor badge!

I`ve never tried it but that crack looks like you can squeeze contact cement under both sides and roll that crack back down. I would use chrome bumper polish on the hardware, and the shells look like they will come very clean.

Make sure you clean under the crack and warm it with a hair dryer before glueing.

And use something more substantial than contact cement. Use epoxy and some clamps and a block to hold it in place for the few minutes it will take to set.

All great advice...thanks!!

well. i have lots of skin here. the cost of the hide is not that great(postage wouldn't be that much either, because they would come in a roll) and then I could walk you through how to do them yourself, on your old hoops. wouldn't cost you anymore than plastic heads and you would preserve the vintage character of the drums. one thing i am concerned about on these shells is this ; can they take the stress of plastic heads? i have a '59(i think) Sonor 13" snare.it's the same series as yours but it was made just after Sonor went over to inch sized shells and started using the more familiar teardrop lugs,rather than the shorter ones that i think your drums have.so i am thinking that the shell is probably the same formulation as yours. whether it came out with calf heads or plastic ones , i don't know but the shell is very thin(only 5mm---which isn't even 1/8"),with really thick rerings, and after 50 years and having sustained the tensioning of plastic heads for probably a lot of that time it is quite warped at the lug tips.you have to remember that offset lugs put a lot more stress on the shell, than double sided lugs,because the tensioning causes the tips of the lugs to torque out from the shell along the axis of the lug screw or stud and therefore perpendicular to the shell wall.so you get the top and bottom lug tips ,which are quite close together both torqueing out of the shell wall and you can get a lot of warping. i've seen the entire lug screw pull right through the shell on a few old drums with thin shells. double sided lugs provide relatively equal tension on both ends of the lug so the top and bottom torque are cancelled somewhat and the stress is transferred perpendicular to the axis of the lug screw or stud and therefore longitudnally along the shell wall. the mylar heads, in any thickness over 5 mil put a lot of stress on those old thin shells. they require more tension than calf heads to reach an ideal response. this kind of damage doesn't happen overnight but you get a small amount of warping now and then the head has to be tightened some more and then more warpage, more tension and so-on. 6 or 7 years down the line you've got permanently warped shells and it is a lot of work to bring those shells back into nick.