I understand and, in general, I agree. But I have no actual reference material to those years or what Ludwig did during that period. I agree with your contention to a point and would be hard pressed, as well. But, the bottom line is that there is no reference available. I'm not suggesting that Ludwig "secretly" did anything during the non-catalogued years. I'm merely pointing out that if one uses the available catalogues as reference material then I can't invent a non-existent catalogue up and use it as a reference.

Certainly, at the time, most people used whatever catalogues were in existence to determine what was available. But, again, 50-60 years later, as collecting goes, it's a new day and there has to be some kind of criteria for determining the legitimacy of what is being collected. Sure, we all have to fill-in-the-blanks sometimes....like with the missing catalogue reference material. But you might fill in the blanks differently than I do. And it's because of that ambiguity that neither one of us can be 100% correct in regards to this point.

For example: I've seen a completely legit, matching numbers, factory kit with 14 X 18 bass drum and Downbeat snare. Some people will call that a Downbeat kit. Others will call it a Jazzette. In my opinion, the configuration always trumps the finish option, as far as names go...So, to me, there isn't really a name for a 14 X 18 bass drum configuration even though, to others, it's clearly a Jazzette or a Downbeat.

K.O. when there was no collecting game going on, back then, the catalogues were for what they were for -ordering. But, NOW, there is a collecting game and those same catalogues are used for referencing. So you can say catalog be damned if you want, but, then what is your criteria for determining the legitimacy to the application of the named configurations? This thread was started because someone listed a drum for sale as a 1963 Jazzette bass drum that couldn't possibly be that. That name didn't exist (for Ludwig, anyway) before 1967. And there would be no way of knowing that without having a catalogue to reference.

(Edit) And so the question becomes, "Why is THAT important in the case of this bass drum in question?" The biggest reason is because a vintage Ludwig 12 X 18 marching bass drum has a certain value to collectors. A 12 X18 bass drum from a Gold Coast kit has another value to collectors. And the Jazzette bass drum has yet another value to collectors. ALL these applications of the 12 X 18 bass drum have different values to collectors. At the moment, the Jazzette application is the most desirable and the marcher application is the least desirable. So, when someone who is looking for a Jazzette kit to have in their collection, sees a 1963 Jazzette bass drum for sale....if they don't have a reference to cross check, then the seller stands to profit through deception. After all, they are asking $900.00 based on the premise that it is a legit Jazzette bass drum. I'm quite sure that price was determined on the thought that if the bass drum was a legit Jazzette bass drum from a kit, then the $900.00 dollar price would be a great deal and it would sell quickly....But, it's not a legit Jazzette bass drum. However, in this case, it's certainly a good enough deception to fool a lot of people....unless they have something from that era to reference......*cough*....like a catalogue! ;)

Here's another example:

Years ago, I wanted to buy a Super Classic kit and a friend of mine found what we both believed was an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous blue sparkle Super Classic...might be a picture of it in the gallery somewhere.... BUT, there was no cymbal mount on the bass drum and there never was one. Turns out, I had gotten a Deluxe Classic. The only difference was the hardware package! The Super Classic came with the regular hardware and the Deluxe Classic came with the new (at that time) Atlas hardware package. Since there was no Atlas bass drum mounted cymbal stand, they left the mount off the bass drum and gave you an Atlas floor stand, instead.

Of course, I was elated to have the Deluxe Classic but, had there been no catalogue to 'splain why there was no cymbal mount on the bass drum, I might have just thought I got an oddball Super Classic. But, because of the catalogue reference, I re-sold that kit for a really good profit! Catalogues be praised! :)

My opinions on this stuff vary widely from yours.

First I'd say there is no such thing as a "jazzette" bass drum. What there are are 12x18 classic bass drums, some of which originally came as part of a Jazzette outfit.

I'd agree that the catalogs are one of the best resources there are for collectors, but certainly not the end all be all of information as they tend to be inaccurate. One reason being that they typically covered at least a two year span while the products Ludwig churned out were continually evolving in minor details. There are also outright errors. As I mentioned above the catalogs prior to #75 stated that Ludwig shells were made of plies of mahogany and poplar with maple re-rings. If the catalog is "law" and your drums have maple interiors...well, are you sure they are even actual Ludwig drums? Plus there were brochures and one sheet flyers printed in the interim years that showcased new products that had missed inclusion in the catalog. Unless you have a complete set of those on hand it's tough to know for certain what the pedigree of a particular drum or outfit might be.

As far as the outfit names I really don't care. They make a nice shorthand way to tell someone what sizes a set is but to my mind they are just names that the marketing department put on different combinations of musical instruments. I consider each drum to be an instrument in and of itself and outfits to just be combinations of those instruments. The catalog outfits were a marketing tool to suggest a few popular combinations you could buy. This was a smart move as it simplified things for dealers, for first time buyers who weren't sure what they needed, and also surely was good for Ludwig as far as production went, insuring that most sales were for standard setups in a limited number of sizes. Plus, looking at the pictures of complete sets was much more fun than if they had simply put out a brief catalog of all the available sizes and related hardware and made you pick out your own. No doubt they sold a lot more drums that way as well. If you were buying drums one by one (which some people did) you might decide you didn't really need a floor tom. Selling outfits insured that they sold all the included stuff. Buying an outfit presented a goal to save up to and surely some folks bought more than they needed. The Blue Note, and later the Octa-Plus, were definitely aspirational setups that we all dreamed about, even if they were overkill for many of us.

I guess I'm not a "collector" so some of this stuff is unimportant to me. I really don't care whether a five piece set is a Big Beat or a Hollywood as they are exactly the same drums. I guess what I am is a musician (well a drummer at least) who has accumulated a lot of different instruments (nearly 200 snare drums and 43 sets at last count) but to me that is what they are, instruments to perform on. With that in mind I could care less whether or not a group of drums happens to match a catalog image or a particular outfit size chart. I prefer 12" mounted toms and I tend to use them in a "one up" situation regardless of whether the bass drum is an 18", 20", 22" or 24". That is about making the sound I want rather than conforming to a combination someone else came up with decades ago for whatever reason.

That's just the way I think and anyone else is certainly entitled to have their own thoughts on the topic but nobody's necessarily right or wrong on this. It is the way the collectibles market works, and they have hit upon certain factors that determine value. I get that but don't dance to that tune. If that's what really matters to someone they should be buying new drums and then leave them sealed in the boxes. That's not why I play the drums. I use what I want, how I want. I will not drill new holes or otherwise bastardize vintage drums (I might upgrade them to INDe mounts but that can always be easily reversed) but I'm not a slave to some old catalog either. If someone feels catalog correctness is of primary importance then that's fine but I do get a bit upset when someone excitedly posts about the new 12/13/16/20 set they picked up only to receive a negative blast from a few because their bass drum doesn't fit into the cookie cutter outfit mentality. I guess it's a reality that catalog sets are more valuable as things, but non catalog variations are wholly valid as combinations of instruments to create music with, as much as anything that happened to be in the catalogs.

I'm curious though whether a pre-1975 wrapped 12/14/18 set should be considered as a Jazzette that was special ordered with wrap, or a Downbeat that was special ordered with the cataloged 12x18 bass drum?

I still laugh at the catalog cops. I know that some (probably all) U.S. drum manufacturers included small print in the catalogs to inform people of two things. 1. the specs on the pictured and listed drums might vary from the drums you actually receive. 2. sizes and certain specs for the drums listed in a pictured drum set can be substituted for sizes and some specs that you might wish to order.

I bought quite a few new drum sets during the twenty plus years (50's, 60's, 70's) when I played the most gigs. I recall ordering new drum sets from Rogers and Camco by telling the selling dealers exactly the drums and specs I wanted in the respective current catalogs. The drum sets that I ordered were not pictured in the catalogs. But, they were similar to sets that were pictured. I also bought several drum sets that dealers had in stock. In the Chicago area, most of the stores where I shopped did not usually carry the exact configurations pictured in the catalogs. The monster drum dealers in Chicago--Frank's and Bill Crowden's--could piece together almost any configuration you wanted. They could also mount your desired type of hardware in the locations you preferred on the drums. The Slingerland, Camco, and Ludwig factories were located within an hour or two drive. And, the Gretsch warehouse was in the same building as Bill Crowden's Drums Ltd. I wanted to add a second mounted tom to my Green Glass Glitter Slingerland set that was a twenty-year-old four piece set in the attic of a old store that was going out of business. The drums were still in unopened shipping boxes. The dealer called the factory so I could talk to the warehouse manager. "Sure... I'm looking at a shelf full of green 9x13 toms. Do you want it as the left or right drum in the pair? What type of mounting hardware would you like me to put on it"? The next day, I drove to the Slingerland factory in Niles to pick up the new drum. It was a perfect match to the NOS set that I had just bought.

If the seller had said " Jazzette-size not from a Jazzette-set" in his text then this thread wouldn't present as it has. Nonetheless it's 900$ which no one has anyway... has funny spurs.. was rewrapped over something....is nice inside...looks good inside.... and...It is misleading but anyone with 900$ for one drum would realize everything (and not be mislead) . You'd hope..but then again who cares..if one is set on building a Jazzette-size Ludwig set (there has to be 1 person on earth?) would use this drum. At 900 hmm hmm. Maybe you have an old Ludwig 12/14 in Red Sparkle looking for a bass drum in the size 12 x 18. (I'm snoring. 900$ is outrageous number on a drummer budget. Unless you have a great day job. Or something,

uh-oh 24% price drop down to 760.

https://reverb.com/item/29129297-ludwig-jazzette-1963-red-sparkle-bass-drum-12x18?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIgLfars_Y5QIVXB6tBh34-gS7EAQYBCABEgL17vD_BwE&merchant_id=140088481&pla=1&utm_campaign=7276534768&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google

for a 400$ drum. Front bass head is nice. yellowed-decal- Reminds me of my very first set..

$900 is crazy money for that drum given all the questionable issues and the rewrap. Even if it were all original with the "normal" disappearing spurs that price would be pushing it. I actually have a KB red sparkle bop set with a 14x18 bass drum. If this drum were priced in accord with its issues ( say $300 ) I might consider it just to have a 12" deep option available ( although I'm pretty sure the difference in sound would be negligible). For me the main issue here is the price.

Most of us are old enough to have memories about the way things used to be back when we first started buying drums. Most of the nostalgic stories written about those times reflect what drum buying used to be. No one, at that time, had any idea that the day would come when there were no more real American made drums and music stores. But when it became apparent that the drum stuff we related to was disintegrating, the trend for collecting began.

As the interest in collecting grew, certain lines of delineation sprang up. There was no "official rule book" for it but still, people needed to have some kind of reference to identify items and to determine the more desirable items from the less desirable items. After awhile, the more ubiquitous drums that were easy to find -like Acrolites, for example, stayed at the low end of both interest and pricing. So almost anyone could buy an Acrolite for a song a few years ago. In fact, I thought there were almost an infinite number of Acrolites out there! -so many that they would always be available. Boy, was I wrong about that! Now, even the once-lowly Acrolites are commanding much more money than ever before!

In regards to the less common drums and kits -like the Downbeat snare drum and the Jazzette drum kit, for example(s) these items were/are harder to find and, thus, became more prized, in general, to collectors....kinda like finding a diamond on the beach! Personally, as a drummer, I love playing the Acrolite much more than the Downbeat. But, if I had the two drums in front of me with the choice to buy one or the other, then I'm getting the Downbeat because, as a collector, it's a much more rare and valuable drum as a collectable...and, dare I say "cooler" looking! Plus, I have plenty of drums I used for work, so I was and still am very particular about what I make room for in my house. It's gotta be really, really good!

The naming of the drums and kits was a HUGE help to some of us collectors. The Super Classic and the Deluxe Classic are also the same drums....but, the values are quite a bit different! So what's in a name? For me, almost three times the amount of profit! I could have kept it and had what, to this day, is the only Deluxe Classic I've ever seen on the market, but, in all honesty, I didn't like the way it sounded and so I didn't want it taking up space. That's why I sold it.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with just accumulating a bunch of drums, too. The line between hoarding and collecting can blur in this regard. Personally, I only collect items that are complete and as originally-intact as possible so as to limit myself. I know there are people out there who have many more drums than I do. I'm more of a "quality vs quantity" kind of collector, I guess.

There's not a single person here who would be able to even formulate an argument about what's-what in regards to vintage drums without having some kind of reference to draw from. Every bit of the counterpoints on this thread were arrived at by using the catalogue reference information -even though those same people also say that the catalogue information is irrelevant in some way....oooooookay.

I can read stories about "the time I went to Frank's Drum Shop and ordered my Ludwig kit with Rogers hardware...blah blah blah..." -and similar stories about how people used to do stuff back when there was no collecting going on. I have plenty of those kinds of stories, too. Those stories and experiences are often very interesting to read for the sake of nostalgia....but don't have even a tiny bit of relevance to determining collectible values in the present day. They are just personal recollections of individual experiences. Maybe lots of people made custom orders back in the day.....Great! It's just too bad that all those Ludwig drums with Rogers hardware aren't worth a fraction of what an original, unmolested Ludwig kit would be worth today. Heck, maybe I'm wrong...Maybe Frank's and other big drum shops are at least partially responsible for making the collecting game, of today, what it is because they butchered so many drum sets, that it makes the ones that remain, which aren't butchered, even more valuable and desirable among collectors! Thanks for that, Frank's! ;)

But, joking aside, collectors of all kinds of things need things like reference material and provenance. And, even if the available materials used for reference are less than perfect, they are still important in determining both identity and value to the present-day collecting game.

Yeah that drum isn't worth $900.00 -not even close! HOWEVER....IF it was in perfect shape and was a real Jazzette bass drum, then I think people would be all over it.

"all those Ludwig drums with Rogers hardware aren't worth a fraction of what an original, unmolested Ludwig kit would be worth today". How many of you "authentic drum" collectors would soil your pants over an exact replica of Ringo's Ludwigs with the Swivomatic tom mount?