I have an odd set of Slingerland drums that appear to be from the 80's or 90's. Trying to figure what I have. The hardware is clearly traditional Slingerland hardware, complete with jumbo size butterfly nuts on the floor tom. The shells are three ply Maple-Mahogany-Poplar or Maple-Mahogany-Something else. The inner ply is clearly a maple ply, the middle ply clearly mahogany, the outer ply I can't really tell. Looks too dark to be poplar, but not sure what else it would be.
The badges are your standard oval shaped black badges with serial numbers, but no city. Inside the drums there are some small round paper stickers with Chinese writing.
What confuses me is that I know the US made Slingerlands of this era used a three ply like what I have, but the stickers seem to indicate asian manufacture which would imply Luan construction.
Soundwise they are pretty thunderous, although not quite as much as my 70's era extra deep Slingerlands with power toms, but very similar character nonetheless and absolutely nothing like even the best of the luan drums of that era.
A very knowledgable Buddy of mine who owns a local drum shop said these were probably Spirit series of the early 90's, but I understood those to be luan shells not mmp. Can anybody shed some light here?
..Joe