Those are great pictures illustrating the different plys! I could have easily missed a ply or two in those pictures without the numbers on them. Very helpful! Thanks.

Definitely not a common set. The 14x10 (or 10x14 for many of us!) strikes me as an odd size. Having that huge tom mounted on the consolette of the 20" bass drum certainly isn't my favorite setup! The picture of this tom on the floor tom is what lead me to believe that it might be an 8x12 and 14x14. However, if you like this combination, and the drums are in good condition both inside and out...AND the price is right...then go for it! Let us know what happens!

-Mark

Went and checked out the drums. They are in great condition and I'm happy to say that I purchased the kit for $1200!

Thankfully, the shells are the 3 ply construction. The date stamp in the bass drum is Oct 6th 1970! The wraps on all the drums are in good condition. The bass drum hoops are a little worn and the reso head is a little grimy but definitely cleanable. The drums all have original weather master heads which are fairly worn in. One strange thing though, both toms have batter heads on the resonant side... Is that abnormal? Also, seems like the rack tom is a 10x13" not 14".

Definitely going to clean these drums up the best I can, but they are really in great condition, the blue olive badges are prissstiiiiiine! Undecided on whether to replace these tom heads or not. Here is a link to some photos of the drums, let me know what y'all think!

https://imgur.com/a/buiEb4h

As opposed to what sort of head on the bottoms? At that time Ludwig drums (other than snare drums) came from the factory with the same medium heads top and bottom.

Your mounted tom would have to be a 9x13 from that era as they didn't make a 10x13.

Sounds like a cool set.

Ah, didn't know that about the heads. Tom is indeed a 9x13, thanks!

I'm certainly no Ludwig expert, but was Ludwig using the curved spurs in 1970?

Probably so. I've got a '71 kit that has them.

Mike

I'd say it's all but certain. There are even Keystone kits with the curved spurs, but there's of course always crossover. Still, I'm sure someone's seen a '60s stamped kit with curved spurs.

The curved spurs were part of the (then) new Atlas hardware line.

First of all great score! This set looks like it's totally factory original with original heads and all. This topic has been discussed before but Ludwig did not offer a 20,13,16 out of any catalog they had. There are a lot of them out there though as I have seen tons of them that seemingly came from the factory this way. These sets have been often times referred to as "superbeats" as they are a mix of the super classic(22,13,16) and the downbeat(20,12,14). As far as I have seen Ludwig never used the term superbeat but again that has been a topic of discussion as there are some that say it is an official Ludwig term. I just have yet to see any concrete proof.

I have followed the serial number badge thing quite closely and there was a decent run of blank B/O badges that were used around late September in to October 1970 so that makes total sense with your bass drum. The other serial starting with the 8 would lead me to believe that was correct for a late 1970 build or possibly even 1971.(I don't know what the full number is). You also mentioned that one drums has a serial starting with 6? Is this correct? That would be puzzling to me as a serial number starting with 6 would be a keystone badge from late 1968 into 1969. Do any of the toms have date stamps? Looks like all of your heads are original. These should clean up nicely!