Beautiful!!...Where did you get those?.They remind me of high school,a lot of local bands played these,Bollero,Zimgar etc.They must be a late 60,s,early 70,s,and in such fine shape,Make sure you get a snare to match,even if you have to re wrap something.It wont be hard to match the color.......Soooooo,,you get a deal???

Really super fine kit there! It has several tell-tale features that put it in the same family as my Hoshino. The bracket for the bass drum cymbal arm- with the two tension bolts- is identical to my Hoshino as is the entire tom mount, banaclip and bass drum rail- the same little details, the lug design is also the same. The Stewart is obviously an upper class model with the steel bass drum hoops and sweet bass drum spurs. My Hoshino maybe the student model I suspect. Nice find!

[IMG]http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn87/Osakabop/th_kirin36-img481x600-12572527604a3xtd.jpg[/IMG]

Your set looks amazing! The wrap is in incredible condition for its age. That style of bass drum spur is, in my opinion, the best hardware design featured on an MIJ drum.

However, this seems to be proof that Stewart drums were made by Star, Pearl, and now Hoshino as well... DOH Do you think we could get a close up pic of the lugs and floor tom leg mounts?

(Hey,O-Bop, did Hoshino make an 8 lug BD as well?)

How cool!! I wish I still had my early 70's red sparkle kit. I didn't realize Stewart made a WMP wrap kit. In the words of Borat, "Niiiiiiiiiiiice"!

That is sweet!!! That style of lug will date the kit a bit later than some of the other makers. I have a couple of different stencil drums of no badge or name that have that style. Also, the chromed bass hoops will brinng the kit to the m id to late 70s. Could we see a closer shot of the badge and lugs? Is it oval brass and black enamel or does it appear to be aluminum? Can you take some pix of the interior shells for us? We are looking for some historical links. This is beginning to open some other cans of worms now....If you look around here in this section there is much discourse as to who made what, and when....Anyway, those are so clean and white, I wonder if the wrap is original, but then if it is later, the wrap might be newer type of material than the old celluloid...I have an early WMP that is soo mellow and yellowed. It is a few posts down, see it a little down the line, on the next page I think. http://vintagedrumforum.com/showthread.php?t=12011

I beleive it is either a Stewart or Apollo. However, it is a Pearl, I think, due to the fact it has the tube mount for the tom.

Thinking about this, those lugs I have came from a drum with the name TRAK by HRK Drum Institute. Osaka, could this be a missing link to the Hoshino brand we are looking for? This drum I have is a 6 or 7 ply Mahogany lauan shell. It is definately an 80s drum. I found it somewhere in the internet and TRAK drums were some sort of wanna be from the 80s, and they had 2 lines. There was even a top line drummer for an endorser. Now it is driving me crazier....

I`ll check on TRAK drums- I always assume everything in 80s was made in Taiwan... I think Hoshino (not STAR!) was sold and merged into KAWAI -the keyboard company and they stopped producing drums around 79- this could be wrong but my wife translated that from a Japanese website.

That one rectangular STEWART badge looks so Pearl (just like an old Pearl President badge)- the other looks like a STAR badge doesn`t it (World`s supreme quality one)

I don`t know if Hoshino (not STAR) made an 8 lug bass drum but I would assume so.

Anyway- this WMP Stewart is awesome. I too wonder if it`s a re-wrap- simply because it is so clean and whiteSumo Dude

The Drum badges are oval shaped black and silver-chrome colour, they are not the extra thin sticky type, more like the slingerland style. The floor tom badge is the only one that states "Made in Japan" below the Stewart name, the other 2 pieces don't have the country of origin.

The wrap is original, not a new wrap, although it seems a little brighter in the pics because of the camera's bright flash. In reality they are more "mellow" than in the pics you see, but still very clean and nice.

The shells are pretty much the standard "Luan" that are usually found on these early type Japanese drums, with no reinforcement rings.

I'll try to post some pics of the lugs, badge, shells, floor tom leg mounts.

OK, the shells without the re-rings does date them as later in the lifecycle. I have a feeling that we may be looking at solving a mystery, or atleast finding another piece of the puzzle that is the MIJ stencils. If these are from the Hoshino group, then we have gotten closer to identifying a timeline for the split of the makers. This has been a thorn for us and is driving us mad! You see, at the time of some of these changes, there seems to be an "exit" from the market, and a lapse from the time Star came to be known as TAMA. And now I am getting a distinct feeling they may have operated under the Hoshino name during the re-alignment just prior to intrducing TAMA as the new kid on the block. So that would make a lot of sense because we are certain there has been some apparent duplication of hardware at times and from an unknown player. Does this begin to sound more like the real deal?

Now I think I am figuring out the way it went down. Hoshino "took over" the manufacturing of the Star line up of stencils as the company prepared to launch TAMA. This makes much more sense than an actual unknown third player because the Hoshino stuff we associate with Hoshino is typically the later, newer more modern hardware, and the Star stuff as the venerable old lovely Slingerland and Grestch copies. The reason they were able to keep copying Slingerland is because Bud was the only one too cheap to sue them, and when CBS bought him out, that is when the lawsuits started and Star could no longer import stuff using the copied hardware, in the early 70s!!! I got it!!! This is it. This is how it went down, Star got sued by CBS,and tanked/bankrupted Star, the company, spinning off Hoshino group, changing the style of the hardware and re-inventing itself to launch TAMA, all the while selling Hoshino to KAWAI in order to finance the new undertaking, and possibly to end the lawsuit. Can anyone else take the time to check and see iof the lawsuits are time correct for this? I think I just figured uit out.,

O-Bop, yes, the telltale sign I usually use to see who made what is the badges. Star used the black oval with 'World's Supreme Quality' under the vent (and sometimes the round ones, but I haven't come across any of those, other than the 'Made In Japan' ones.) And Pearl used the rectangular, textured pieces for their badges. I've seen them on Whitehall and some Tempro badges.

Of course, when I see a certain type of badge with another maker's lug design my OCD really starts to flare up!