Hi Al!

I feel your pain with the tension rods! Yes, they are metric. I'm not sure of the size and pitch at the moment. I have quite a few vintage Star drums with these metric rods. Have to treat them like gold!

What I've done in the past is to re-tap the original metric nuts to standard 12-24 thread and use "normal" tension rods. Never had any issues doing this, since the metric nut is very close in diameter to 12-24 rods. If you just can't find those metric rods, you can re-tap!

I obtained my Majestic snare drum without tension rods. I wasn't aware at the time they they needed these rare metric rods. Nothing would fit! So, I re-tapped to 12-24 and it's a great drum!

-Mark

Thanks Mark. Re-tap is something I considered but have never done, but hey, I fixed the microwave my daughter killed this week so I am feeling the Can Do spirit.

If I can't find some for sale soon, I'll give that a whirl.

AL

Im sure someone on here has put inserts into those lugs to accept standard tension rods.

Mark your snare drum looks absolutely fab. Nice to see these snare drums properly restored. Great looking wrap could put that snare with any kit.

I'm sure someone has! It's just a matter of finding which, of dozens, will properly fit. I'm not sure if I've ever tried actually vintage Slingerland inserts with these lugs, but would be interesting to see if they work and keep anyone from having to re-tap the existing metric inserts. Still, sometimes it just gets to difficult to track down the metric tension rods, so you do what you have to do!

-Mark

Thanks for the compliments! I've got some really nice looking snare drums in my MIJ collection. Honestly, I really think I like my MIJ collection more than my US snare drum collection!

-Mark

Drum Factory Direct sells metric tension rods, in various lengths.

- https://www.drumfactorydirect.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_59&products_id=12136

- https://www.drumfactorydirect.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_59&products_id=12137

- https://www.drumfactorydirect.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_59&products_id=12977

- https://www.drumfactorydirect.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_59&products_id=15194

I called DFD and explained my need to them, they said nothing they had would work? Maybe the person I talked to was uninformed?

No, not uninformed! The vintage metric tension rods are closer to 5mm, actually around 4.9mm I believe, and have a thread pitch that is no longer used. I found an old post about this, showing that the threads matched up to a 28 TPI (Threads Per Inch) gauge.

So, unless you are very patient and want to wait for these tension rods, do what I did...just re-thread to 12-24. It's really easy to do!

-Mark