I'm not sure how many were actually produced over the years, but they are quite rare. I can tell you though that having owned one that was given to me by my father when he was alive, which he also happened to have ordered new in 1968 and was his first new drum kit, I have only ever seen two others in person, and one was WFLKurt's. (He had them displayed at a vintage drum show in Manchester, NH some years ago).

I can also tell you that I regretted letting them go in the early 1990's as well. I stopped playing for a while in that time frame, and my dad still played. The Jazzette was finished in a rare finish called Black Panther (see my other thread that I started years ago on VDF about that finish) and was being stored in a closet since I stopped playing out. My dad had a Ludwig BigBeat/Hollywood configuration kit at the time, also in the same Black Panther finish. Sometime about 1991 or so, he had tired of having a black kit for so long. He spotted a new leftover from 1988 Ludwig kit finished in WMP and absolutely had to have it. Well, the only way he could swing the deal was to trade in both kits. Now, at the time he asked me what I was going to do with "my" kit (the Jazzettes) since I had stopped playing. I foolishly told him that he gave them to me and that technically they were really his anyway as he paid for them, not me. So, he took them and the hollywood kit and traded them in on the power-tom sizes "Modular Five-Track" kit in WMP.

A couple of years after doing that, buyers remorse set in with him and he started wishing he never did that deal as he was missing his first new Ludwig kit. I'm sure after learning how rare a Jazzette kit was and in Black Panther as well, making it ultra-rare, he was surely kicking himself.

I have been actively searching for that same kit since the late 1990's and have not been able to track it down. I know someone out there somewhere has to have it as it couldn't just disappear off the face of the earth.

As a side bar, I inherited that WMP Modular Five-track kit when my dad passed 12 years ago, along with the rest of his gear, including the Supraphonic that originally came with the Jazzette kit he bought way back in 1968. He just couldn't part with that snare, as it had a sound that you never get tired of.

Attached is a pic of me as a very small child on that same bp jazzette......so, include my missing kit in that 30-50 total if you guys don't mind ;)

BTW, that extra floor tom in the pic was a custom job my grandfather made for my dad back in the late 60's....my grandfather was a sheetmetal worker, and he replicated an old Slingerland Radio King shell out of sheet metal and it was fitted with Gretsch lugs with some generic legs and hoops. Pretty sure it was a 16x16. That drum and a couple of other pieced together mongrels got traded in around the mid-1980's for the Big Beat/Hollywood kit mentioned above. I wish I still had that as it was a work of art in metal. Didn't sound that fantastic, but it was an amazing piece of craftsmanship.

I have no idea how many there might be but 30-50 in the world seems ridiculously low for a set that remained in Ludwig's catalog for a decade. If they had been selling at the rate of 3-5 sets a year they would have dropped them from their catalog fairly quickly as there would be better ways to utilize that whole page than a drum set that no one buys.

My guess would be that 3 to 5 thousand jazzette sets sold over that period would be closer to the truth. Worldwide that would still make them pretty rare in the grand scheme of things. Rare? yes they are, but yet you could probably have one on it's way to you tomorrow with a few phone calls to the right people....depending on how much you're willing to pay for one.

I wouldn't just want "one".....I would want THE one........which would be my old kit. :D

Speak of the devil - one just popped up on Reverb for only $2500 + shipping.

Somewhat tempted myself, bucket list item but I don't think they are as rare as only 30-50 sets world wide. Jazzbo's from back in the day used these quite a bit which inspired quite a few sales. Some real hard beta would be nice of course...

https://reverb.com/item/6054708-1967-ludwig-jazzette-keystone-bop-set-walnut-stain-12x18-12-14

Well, I own six different vintage Jazzette kits a 1967, (2) 1968, 1969, 1970 and a 1974.