Here's a little 59' (transition badge) DUCO kit I restored and painted myself. 13"x9", 15"x12", 12"x20" and a matching Jazzfest (not shown in the photo.) Very cool little kit.

[IMG]http://i1143.photobucket.com/albums/n632/PurdieShuffle/After.jpg[/IMG]

John

Wow, John, that is gorgeous.

I'm using Rustoleum's black lacquer spray for the background. Not sure yet how to do the stripe.

How did you do your gold stripes? What paint?

P.S. I have a '59 Jazzfest (or Barrett Deems) myself. The original black/gold is in really bad shape, but I've touched it up awaiting my painting skills to improve enough to try them on a valuable vintage piece.

I like the duco finishes. Many do not survive it seems. The blue and silver is my favorite. Green and gold a close second.

Great thread! I love Duco finishes and just picked up a Blue/ Siilver Club Date kit myself and can't wait to get them cleaned up and play them. All three drums have original heads and look as if they have barely been tapped on!

John,

You did an awesome job on those! Please give details on your painting process, especially how you made the stripe come out with an even fade.

I love duco!!

[IMG]http://www.drumforum.org/uploads/monthly_03_2014/post-15200-0-15251400-1396133115.jpg[/IMG]

So awesome ! Great condition ..

Duco was the cheaper alternative to wrap. These days lacquer generally costs more but back then it was the lower priced option. As such most endorsers used wrapped sets and most buyers aspired to buying wrapped sets. Still plenty of them were no doubt sold and I don't think they were that rare back in the day. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if the attrition rate for these were higher than that of wrapped drums meaning that perhaps fewer of them may have survived to today. An old drum set with flaking lacquer and tarnished nickel hardware might be more likely to find it's way to the landfill than a similar wrapped set that can be more easily cleaned and polished up.

There may be some pretty unique examples out there, possibly even some one of a kinds as Ludwig would paint a special order drum any color you wanted if you provided a sample of the desired color. I imagine this was aimed more at the school market for school colors but I'd think some enterprising set players might have taken advantage of it.

Incidentally, many think that the name "Duco" is short for dual color but that isn't the case (at least not originally). You can have a duco drum in a solid color. Duco was the brand name of the industrial lacquer that they used. It was a Dupont product (Duco= DUpont COlor) that found it way onto industrial products of every sort from automobiles to drums. It was the first fast drying lacquer available in a multitude of colors which is why so many industrial users adopted it, including the drum industry.

Randy - Krupa,

I used Krylon spray lacquer with a fine mist nozzle. Then I used an old turntable set at 33 1/3 RPM with a thin piece of particle board on top large enough to hold the drums. I drilled a hole in the center of the particle board to accommodate the spindle on the turntable and so the board would sit flat on the turntable. I did some research at a custom auto painting website and they said: 'To do good fades always lay down the dark color first.' That's what I did. I painted the top and bottom of each shell with several light coats of the forest green and then using the lug holes as a guide for width of the stripe, I painted on the gold accent stripe. It was just a matter of holding the can steady in my hand as the turntable was spinning. The fade at the edges happens all by itself. The trick is; paint on the center stripe while the dark color paint is still wet! Where the paint overlaps, you'll get a killer (Ludwig factory) fade at the edges of the stripe. If you need any info along the way, or have any questions, PM me and I'll do what I can to help out.

John

I'm another fan of Duco although I know lots of people who hate them, I imagine a lot of the re-covered vintage kits we see may have started out life as duco finished.

Most of the duco kits I see seem to be earlier sets from the 30s to the 50s, 60s less often.

It's a good question though, when so many snares turn up in duco finish where have all the kits gone ?

I wonder the same about early Zildjian swish cymbals, I never seem to see any earlier than the 1970s