After quite a bit of research, as best we can do, I have been finding some inconsistencies as some of these get into the 70s. From what I can tell, as we get onto 1972, Star is beginning to get out of the stencil game because their costs are going up. They are refusing to cut back to cheaper castings, and this is driving the costs up, as well as the burgeoning technology market and subsequent boom in Japan. As this is happening, they are positioning themselves to go forward with the big name change as there was some legality of continiuing to use the Star name in the US market.
At the same time, Pearl is taking the bulk of it's production off-shore to a cheaper labor market, in Taiwan, and begiining to make the hardware cuts we begin to see and associate with this time period. Ludwig is seeing an opportunity because the problems Slingerland is having in it's CBS corp structure in the form of pressure to increase production and profits, hence the decresed quality, and since the Ludwig Family still, presumably, is in at least majority control of it's company they strike hard at the market with a better Standard Program and increased prodution of these more budget minded sets. Also, Rogers,Gretsch, and anyone else still hanging on during these periods of unprecedented inflation to to the paper and oil embargos and price gouges, and corporate greed, as both begin to struggle as well...
Anyway, this is the most painful financial period seen in a generation, and the musical instrument industry, along with virtually everything else, sees the biggest drop in quality in modern history, all in about a 5-8 year period. Made In Japan begins to become more equality viewed in quality during this period as well, as the quality of all things American begin to really suffer as a more lax attitude because the labor unions begin to put a real stranglehold on American production lines, causing more increases in costs, and the understanding that it is virtually impossibible to lose your job, so employees begin to take advantage of this mindset, and therefore in order to survive, companies are forced to cut material costs to meet budgetary demands. This is not an invitation to debate the labor unions. If it begins to happen, it will get ugly, and I will ask our venerable and esteemed moderators to close this thread.
So Pearl picks up many of Stars' contracts, as Star begins the shift to TAMA. Along the way, it leaves many distributors struggling to keep up with their contractual agreements to supply music stores and the big department stores, Sears, JC Penney, Montgomery-Ward et.al. So, Pearl gets all this new business, and has a rather captive audience in the climate of the day, they have increased production due to a quadrupling of requests and struggles to keep up with the deamnd of all this newly acquired increase, and so quality begins to suffer, materials get cheaper because the demand is also increasing, and we begin a thiry year downward spiral in quality from all builders.
There are many more paragraphs to be written on this subject, so I am hoping others that are from the inside will chime in to give more of the real story.
[COLOR=red]And again, I will ask that this thread not be hi-jacked by a nasty debate on that subject of labor unions, and will immediately ask for it to be closed if this happens. We all have very strong feelings about this, and I do not want a debate such as this to divide this forum.[/COLOR]
That said, let's get on with any more information on this subject. Remember, our friend is asking if we can give some information on the big change in a stencil buyers' quality and apparent shift in over all look and feel. Please understand, this is a subject dealing with the change in the MIJ market, not an invitation to bash iether the Japanese or America's drum builders. I have provided a timeline that I have dug about to get a grasp on from these same question as well.