First off, congrats on an amazing restoration job mate!! As for choice of snare I guess it all depends on how much you want to spend. If money is no problem go for a matching wood snare, a 6 lug Pioneer or the 8 lug Jazz Festival. At the moment I personally prefer the nice warm woddy tone you get from a simple 6 lug 3-ply snare. I prefer my silver sparkle Pioneer over my Super Classic, Supraphonic and Rogers Dynasonic, it's my favorite and it was the cheapest! Sky Blue Pearl is one of the most expensive/collectable finish's at the moment though. If you can't part with over $500 for a matching wood snare, I'd go for the 60's 8 lug Acrolite. Although I have never personally played one, they apparently sound just like the overpriced supra. You can pick one up for $150+ on e-bay in the US. Don't bother getting one from Australia, they are WAY overpriced on e-bay. Even with the $70 shipping from the US it's still cheaper than buying locally. Hope this helps & good luck. Cheers.

I got lucky and got a matching Jazzfest but I still use my Supra a lot for gigging. I like both of them.

I had a SuperSensitive for awhile and could never get it to sound as good as a plain Supra.

Matt

Your best "bet" is to go with a Supra. Why? Because you can ALWAYS find one on EBay.

A SBP Jazz Festival would be another good choice...but you may have to search awhile to find one.

SupSens and Acrolites were not commonly used as factory snare drums for drum sets....but both are great drums and would work just fine.

awesome job on that restoration. that is so amazing to see someone like you bring something like that back to life. it made my day to see those before and after pictures.

my favorite kit is also my 1965 ludwig sky blue pearl. its one of those early dual tom configurations with the 22-12-12-16 with the wood block spacer between the two toms. when i bought it years ago, it had a 65 or 66 acrolite with it,which i still own. it is an amazing sounding drum. i love it. but i kinda always wanted a supra. everytime i found one period correct, i got outbid on it. then, after getting a copy of a 64 ludwig catalog, i see that my 65 hollywood kit was supposed to have a jazz festival snare with it. it took me a long time but i finally found one a few years ago. it is sweet. i keep it setup with the kit at all times and occasionally bring in the other snares to play. and of course you gotta be careful adding to sky blue pearls because of the vast fade variation that they have. my kit has that cool green fade to it and no one notices the snare is just a little brighter until me and my ocd mentions it.

i think a pretty chrome supra would look amazing with your kit. and like the others mentioned, you can see those or the acrolites on ebay at most each and every day. congrats again on a sweet kit and good luck on a snare.

mike

Wow, what a great job you did on those severely abused drums. I thought my resto project was bad. I'm in the same boat as you, my kit won't be perfect, but will be a sound player's kit. As far as snare, Supra or Acro, plenty on ebay.

Thanks sincerely for the informed and informative posts. Taking it all on board and - ebaying of course! I will post an update when I make a buy . . .