Hi. You're probably right with the age, and with me being in the UK, Premier stuff is obviously easier to find. I had an 80's APK, but it was cheap lauan, black painted so didn't sound a shadow of Premier's former glory. There was apoint in the 80's when the cheap wood came in but the hardware would have appeared on both new and old wood however. If you can confirm it's birch, I'd say get it, because even over here, single bass drums don't crop up all that much.

hi how about this wood

Wood is Mahogany with an outer ply of Birch,

is that good?

thxD' Drummer

If it's proper mahogany and not philippine (which I don't think it will be going by the age, then it's good. Premier made both mahogany and birch shells - maybe they did both on some drums? They mixed up hardware to use it all up, so I think they were capable of anything!

I used to have the Royale APK kit in the 80's. I think it had Luan shells. They shoulded good though. I used that kit in my first session and it sounded pretty good. Unless the shells are not round, good heads can do wonders for just about any kit. Mine were black finish and had black stain looking stuff on the inside with no rings. They were cheaply done but in the mid 80's they were still better than the old cheap Tama's and Pearl's. It was 8/10/12/13/16/22. It had the oval shaped tom holder in the kick and the tom stand. I still have the hi-hat stand and snare stand from that kit. I use them on my practice kits. The chrome was bad on that hardware. The bass drum pedal was junk. They came with the Premier version of the black dot heads with the clear center of the black dot. It's the same kit in the pic except that mine had double headed toms and no concert toms.

http://www.vintagedrumguide.com/images/premier_drumsets/apk-premier-catalog_page_01.jpg