Seems like plastic is close enough to acrylic in consumer's general perception, and we've been there already.

I believe Rogers tried this with Rogers II Series...and we all know how that turned out!

-Mark

Plenty of examples really (some successful): Fibes, Blaemire, Vistalites, Pearl phenolics and even this Ludwig snare

http://vintagedrumforum.com/showthread.php?t=67212&highlight=plastic+snare

Pearl phenolic drums are about as close to plastic as you can get.

I played a snare and it was actually OK.

But at $500 bucks...

I have a couple of Arbiter toms which I purchased years ago. I simply wanted to experiment. I believe they are made from PVC which, according to a bit of googling, are a type of plastic. I'm relatively sure that the bass was as well. I don't know about the snare.

Brian

I've got a Ludwig Vistalite Combo set and a Ludwig Educator set. Both of these were very late 70's and have plastic lugs. I play them, so I replaced them with conventional lugs...same hole pattern...and put the plastics up for keeping. I also have a "composite" Ludwig Combo snare which is very much like plastic and has plastic lugs. I have a Educator snare with the same composite material but it came with metal lugs. There is a member on another forum who has a late 70's/early 80's Ludwig Acrolite that had plastic bowtie lugs.

Mike

Back in the late 70's, there was a drummer at the Red Onion in Canoga Park, CA with a huge kit of plastic shells. Custom made somewhere.

Sounded normal through the PA.

Acrylic is a good example of plastic shell material. It is hard and dense.

Softer colored plastic for bottles and such? Probably not dense and Ridgid enough.

But with the right mics.....that cookie container might be the right sound for this record.

I am a Blaemire appreciator.

Interesting!

I just remember that the old telephone housings were made of some type of plastic that's almost indestructible...receivers being slammed down during arguments...dropping on the hallway floor...In fact, I don't think anyone truly "owned" those phones. They just came as part of your telephone service back in the day....kinda like a cable box or something...Anyway, I digress.

Vistalites and those types of acrylic drums are another type of plastic I guess...the type that would sometimes crack at stress points. But I know there are other formulas that could be utilized and wouldn't crack. I guess what I'm suggesting is that acrylic was nice because it was transparent and looked cool...but maybe wasn't the ideal formula for crack-resistance.

I think there are even some types of plastics that are literally bullet proof! Are some of the plastics too expensive to make, I wonder?

And while I do agree that there are materials similar to it, such as fiberglass, carbon fiber -as well as a lot of other types of materials, all-told, plastic just seems like it would have been "the" thing when everyone was making stuff out of it back in the day.

It just occurred to me that Peavey RadialPro 500 drums were made of some type of composite plastic! I should have thought of them right away!

I wonder if plastics will be utilized more for drum shells and parts in the future.

In my mis-spent youth I worked for Jimmy Corder at his Custom Clear Drum Company which made clear acrylic drums. The most know early clear drums were Zickos I believe. I know the idea had been around for a long time and have some photos that are pretty interesting. I don't know anything about the drums in the photos but of course they came from California.