Ploughman is probably right about this. I have a feeling mine was one of those made during the change and that a mix of both types was going on to use up old inventory. Heck, a Dyna before/after mine could have had a twisted gate.

-Mark

By the way, I find it is very hard to choke the other Rogers snare drums of the mid to late 60's era. I'm less sure about the Holiday model, but for Tower and PowerTone, as well as Dynasonic, the snare bed is very shallow and that is part of the secret. Before it chokes, it has reached the limit to which the snares themselves can be moved in the vertical orientation against the head. In fact, I can't ever recall being able to choke any of my Rogers snare drums. You also don't have the problems with head fit around the bed that you have on some of the other manufacturer's drums.

Dynasonic did reduce the extent to which you could choke a drum a bit more with an extremely shallow snare bed. However, I think the main thing Dynasonic did, beyond providing really good protection of the snares themselves, was to allow the snares to be tensioned before it ever touched the head.

Last year I was using a 5-line COB Dynasonic, but I took it home and have a COB PowerTone with me now. For the general run of music one encounters in a cover band, I think the PowerTone is the more versitile drum. I have a wooden shell model coming out in a couple of weeks and will compare again with the COB in November. The PowerTone acts exactly as its name implies - lots of power. The Dyna is more sensitive, but I find it is less satisfactory for a night of rim shot back beat play. My guess is that it has something to do with the effort needed to drive the entire frame outward, but I'm really not too sure of the mechanics in play. There may be a tendency, as well, for a 10 lug snare drum to absorb some of the action from the rim and distribute it into the shell rather than across the head.

That means my hoop could be original?

Most likely IS the real deal.