It may not be so much that these lower end kits weren't taken care of, as much as it is that most of these lower end kits didn't come with floor toms. Check out the old drum set catalogs on vintagedrumguide.com

and welcome to the forum.

Thanks. Looking at the guide, your suggestion seems like it could be the case. I had seen the kit in a pdf of an old catalog and kind of assumed that the kit was purchased with a floor tom, even though the price is listed for each drum and not necessarily the kit as a whole.

ive seen some invoices from the 60's from the manufacturer to the dealer. many simply did not have floor toms like mentioned above. the ludwig combo kits were even marketed as such. some added them later.

mike

Hey man, when I was 14 (1963) those little 12", 20", DUCO kits w/pioneer were the only 'affordable' sets I could look at in the catalogs. The snares get sold off over the years and so you find a ton of 12", 20" drum combinations for sale. Some guys added floor toms later, but for some odd reason, floor toms go missing as often as the snares from these kits. It was the bottom-end budget kit at the time. I'll bet the dealers just grabbed random matching drums off the shelves to fill sales orders. It's a mad-house I tells ya, a mad-house!

Frustrating situation if you're trying to put together a kit for yourself. Takes a lot of patience and persistence.

John

A lot of musicians didn't have cars back in the 50's and earlier. They had to carry their drums onto busses, cabs, or trains. A floor tom was one drum too many.

BunE - You're showing your age! LOL

I grew up in Manhattan, started playing clubs & bars at 16. Me and the bass player used to wrestle my drums around the city on buses, subways and big yellow Checker Marathon taxi's. It was such a hassle. Ah, the good old days! lol

John

John.....most people don't know about the typical NY Checker yellow cab.The interior and trunks were so big in these cars,you could raise a family of 4 in them.There were Checkers in other large cities,but as a New Yorker at that time....they were a part of growing up in NY City.

More OT that seem to be the best answer to the question,as well as the selling off of different pieces.The snare and floor tom were easier to sell .But if there were Checker cabs in the late 40's and 50's...we'd all still be playing 26" bass drums.

Steve B

Steve - The Checkers were a luxury that we couldn't afford very often. Most times it was buses or subways. When you're only making $20 a man for the night, it's hard to justify spending a few dollars on a cab when we could hop a bus or train and get anywhere in the city for .15 cents.

Like I said, ahhh, the good ole' days!

John

When I got my first kit in about 1974, I bought a Pearl kit like the one in the catalog page here, and a different line of non-matching Pearl floor tom was thrown in. I have never been able to find a real matching floor tom since then.