Thanks Marty. That’s really interesting. I was intrigued by your comment about how far the tension screws were wound in. I’ve actually just stripped and cleaned the pedal completely and re-greased everything. The whole thing was totally gummed up. When I reassembled it I found that the action was quite sloppy (compared to my Ludwig Ghost) so tried winding the tension up a bit to see if it improved it. I’m no SK expert so perhaps that’s the way it’s meant to be? Also the beater sits quite a way from the head and has no adjustment in that regard so will definitely take some getting used to.

Yes it does. The longer stop makes it later model like Marty mentioned, The footboard is no indication of Make because it is interchangeable with the first one ever made. The tab with screw on the top of the foot board ID's the board only.

But relax, members here can tell you anything you need to know about it, Ludwig is here sometimes too.

Under the pillars are two springs with tension screws, These adjust travel time by pulling the beater forward or pull it away from the head. In between full backstop and front head stop is the pedal's float spring tension. Meaning if you step off your board, it should continuer to bounce back and forth and never go full back or front. If it does not do this, it is not tuned to it's best performance. If you find your best tension is too close to the head or far back to the click, take the beater out, put it in a vice and give it a desired bend up high.

Gerard, I'm out of town right now and don't have access to a Speed King, but - in my experience - I only put a couple turns on those bottom screws. Maybe the springs in your's have "taken a short set" (not as flexible as they should be after years of being tightened down.)

Of course, the number of turns on the screws is dependent on how ""tight" you want the action to be (how much resistance you want from the pedal). The more you turn the screws, the more resistance the pedal gives you, but also the more the beater moves away from the head.

Sorry, this is all I can offer you. Hoping an expert chimes in. Regards, MB

Are you referring to Vincent Leef, owner (or co-owner) of Vitalizer Drums?

https://www.facebook.com/vitalizerdrums/?ref=page_internal

I can offer a "plug" for Vincent Leef of Vitalizer Drums....on the web at polyphonicdrums.com

He specializes in rebuilding Speed Kings. I bought one of his last year and it's absolutely great. It flies! And no squeeks! His prices are not cheap, but his work is great.

I met him at the Chicago Drum Show last month. Really nice guy, and - although I see from his website that he's fallen behind in filling orders, I'm hopeful that he will be able to answer questions about your Speed King.

Regards, MB

I met him at the Delaware show before the pandemic. He is a really nice guy!

While we're on the subject of Speed King pedals, lemmee throw something out to you, and the Ludwig guys can either tell me that they've noticed this before...or they can tell me that I'm absolutely nuts!

Early in the pandemic, I bought a 1966 Ludwig kit and attached my known-1976 vintage Speed King. But when I pushed it on, I noticed that the "knuckle hinge piece" rubbed against the batter head! (Please forgive my non-technical terms.) So I had to pull the Speed King back about 1/4" or more, so that the knuckle hinge piece cleared the batter head.

I then tried a known-1960s Speed King on this kit and found that it fit just fine. No rubbing against the batter head. It was then that I noticed that the "stop" pieces (at the front bottom of each post) were longer and larger, than on the 1976 pedal.

Two months later, I bought a 1968 Ludwig kit and noticed the same phenomenon. The 1960s pedal was fine, but the 1976 pedal rubbed against the batter head.

I then started measuring the width of the wooden hoops on Ludwig drums and found that they varied between 1/8" and 3/8" difference....Even the two hoops on a single bass drum had measurably different widths.

Although my sampling of bass drums was admittedly extremely small, the 1950s-1960s hoops were all narrower than the 1970s hoops.

I suppose this shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, we know that Ludwig wooden snares and toms also vary in depth somewhat.

It seems to me that, when Ludwig decided to increase the width of the hoops, that put the beater of the then-current-production Speed Kings a bit too far from the batter head...and the solution was to shorten/narrow the "stops" so that the "short stop" Speed Kings would fit better on any Ludwig bass drum....although you couldn't fully push a "short stop" Speed King onto a 1950s-1960s bass drum hoop. You would need to back it off a short amount, so that the knuckle-hinge-piece didn't strike the batter head.

Does this make any sense to you?! Or am I ready for The Funny Farm?

By the way, my 1976 pedal is identical in construction and hardware, to Gerard's pedal which is shown earlier in this thread.

Please tell me that I didn't go insane during the Pandemic!

Regards, MB

Hi Marty. I have the same issue with my new SK on my 1940s Slingerland bass drum. I have to back the pedal off a little to prevent the rubbing that you described. Don’t have the same issue with either my Ghost or my beloved Prelmier 252.

They started making the hoops wider around '68 or so. At some point, they changed the main casting so the stops were further back to accommodate this. They also made rubber spacers that you could attach to the stops so if you had an older drum with the narrower hoops everything would line up.

That is great info, thin shell! Thanks for clearing this up for us, and eliminating my doubts and confusion. BTW, I've got a Ludwig kit with date stamps of Dec 10, 1968. Badges in the 663xxx to 666xxx range. The bass drum has the narrow hoops.

Regards, MB