Cant confirm, but can add that my '78 kit is the same. Mine had matching lugs on top, and non matching on the reso side. I just figured that they needed a kit to go out with heads on the bottom so they drilled them ( as they were concert toms) and sent them out. A lot of concert kits were produced in this time frame. Perhaps someone else has the correct answer as opposed to my mere assumption.

Nevin

I think that's a very solid theory on how that could have happened.

Mike

I know ludwig used whatever they had but man thats really extreme. I guess i shouldn't be surprised.

Might have built the drums during a period when they were transitioning between styles and/or suppliers or perhaps they were getting lugs from more than one supplier. They weren't die-casting these themselves so there was probably a company in the Chicago area, or possibly multiple companies, making the lugs. The trend through the years seemed to be to reduce the amount of metal used in the lug castings.

From Ludwig's point of view, and from a production standpoint, as long as the exterior looked the same, I'm sure they didn't care. A worker reaching into a parts bin for lugs wasn't about to check and see if the interiors matched.

Yet another vintage Ludwig anomaly.. That is pretty weird.. Could it be the the previous owner needed some lugs that were missing and just got any large classic lugs that were available ?

My restored , "orphans " vintage Ludwig consists of classic lugs from the 60's, 70's and 80's and the latest model that Ludwig has produced..

It gets better. On the ludwig facebook page I got this guys message after asking the same thing there....

"I saw your post about the different Ludwig lugs off the same drum. That is factory that way. The heaviest ones, go on the bottom of the kick side and the bottom of the front head, the 2 on each side closest to the floor. The mid weight ones go on the kick side the rest of the way, and the light weight one go on the front side the rest of the way. I found the exact same thing when I restored my stainless kit. mine are 1980 stainless. These are not different year lugs on yours, they used lighter duty casings where there was less pressure on the head and drum. And heavier castings where the power and pressure on the drum is."

So after that, I looked at what I had and it almost seems to make sense. All the thick cast casings were on the batter side, which that much I can confirm as I have a picture before I took the drum apart and you can see they're different with cup washers... Two more thick castings were on the bottom of the reso head. There was only two of the light cast lugs with the reinforcement. The one on the second from right side of the pic..I assume they would be the second set up from the lowest two on the reso head. All the rest are the style on the left of the pic except the one random lug second from left... So I guess what he's saying makes sense.

Yeah, that's pure BS. No way Ludwig was going to that much trouble or paying anyone to go to that much trouble when assembling a drum. There were many different styles of lugs produced by various suppliers over the years. How one might end up with different styles on a single drum is open to several possibilities but I don't think this is one of them. Workers pulled lugs out of one bin at their station and slapped them on the drums. Under no circumstances would it make sense to use 3 different weights of lugs for different parts of the drum: It would slow down production, increase training time, increase inventory problems, and what happens if a worker mistakenly puts the wrong lug in the wrong spot causing a potential warranty problem (assuming the light weight ones weren't capable of carrying the load of a batter head). Additionally there is just one part number for these lugs and only one shown in the parts catalogs. If it was worth all the additional effort to sort through all these lugs for various uses then they surely would have given each their own part number and offered each of them as replacements.

Pure poppycock...either someone's deluded or else they've posted a spoof type of answer. This is sooo farfetched I'd lean towards the latter but then again there are people who think that Ludwig serial numbers contain coded information as to the date and model number of the drum (news-flash: they don't).

Ya, I guess when you look at it that way, you're probably right.

So What do you think happened here? I would have a hard time believing that ludwig would buy thick casting lugs, (which I have a feeling would cost more than the thin ones) just to be random about it.