What a great score. I'm kind of surprised to see a kit priced that reasonably at GC. From the pictures it looks like all it might need is some touching up of the bass drum hoops and maybe a good cleaning.
Yeah, I was surprised too. The guy who answered my questions was a manager of some sort who was a "drum expert." He absolutely did not know that they were a super classic set so I guess maybe they didn't know what they had, or over discounted for the worn bass drum hoops.
Great find for that price, and like the others said, don't worry about the age difference, those are great drums!
Thanks a lot everyone for your help. Learning a lot and getting really excited about my score. Im lucky to walk into the exact configuration I wanted at this price. I'll be going up today to take some photos just so I can look at them (they're on layaway).
At that price if they are in good condition I would grab them before they're gone. I paid $1200 for a 1962 set of Super Classics at Steve Maxwell's in WMP.
The guy who answered my questions was a manager of some sort who was a "drum expert." He absolutely did not know that they were a super classic set so I guess maybe they didn't know what they had, or over discounted for the worn bass drum hoops.
Sad as it is, this is what I've come to expect from a "drum expert" at Guitar Center (is that an oxymoron?). Rarely does that work in our favor, but in this case, it did!
So are all the drums of the same quality in these years, or are some lower grade depending on the kit they came from. I love that they match, but my primary interest is that they are good quality. what I'm wondering is if there were "student" model quality drums in these years or are they all from the same quality pool and the only difference with kits was what sizes you needed.
That is NOT a student model..That's a Super Classic kit for an awesome price..There's one in the same condition here in my city, but all factory matched for $2450 Cdn !! I think that's way overpriced, and he'll never sell it for that amount.. I'd jump on that kit for 750, flaws and all, matched or not !
While I can appreciate the desire to have a set that was all made together at roughly the same time I don't think "matched" is quite the right word as it implies that some drums were specifically made to go together and that really was not the case in the industrial setting that was Ludwig's Chicago plant.
Ludwig churned out shells with the wrap already on them and in the case of popular colors there would be stacks of these shells stored around the factory. When a worker needed to make a 16x16 (or whatever) in a specific color he pulled a shell of that size and color off a stack and started drilling it for hardware. Up until the drill hit the shell its future destiny was unclear, it might become a super classic or a Club Date or possibly even (in the case of bass drums) a single tension economy model.
It truly was a factory with assembly line techniques and no single person building an individual drum or sets of drums start to finish. There may have been individuals tasked with creating sets but they would simply collect finished drums in the appropriate sizes and then add the required mounting hardware to complete the set (or not, as some specialty dealers ordered "virgin" shell packs to which they could install whatever brand of hardware the customer preferred). Ludwig would also configure sets in whatever sizes, and with whatever hardware (of their own branded inventory, not competitor's parts) that a customer wanted so the catalog sets were not set in stone but merely a starting point for the more imaginative dealers or customers.
In regards to GC this seems like a pretty sweet deal coming from them. In my area most of the "vintage" stuff that comes in gets overpriced. I was told that the "experts" in the GC Hollywood store do all the pricing of the vintage stuff (based on photos I presume) and those prices are pretty much rigid at least until the drum(s) goes unsold for 2-3 months. I passed on a really nice vintage snare drum a while back because they wouldn't budge $20 on the $420 price (it was only $20 so I could have just as easily caved but the drum was overpriced to begin with and $400 was still actually too high, and there was principle at stake besides). Perhaps this Silver sparkle set slipped through the cracks and didn't get priced by the all knowing experts in sunny southern Ca.
While, I'm sure there must be some sales people working for GC that do know about vintage drums (besides the guys in Hollywood), they seem few and far between. I once overheard a conversation in a Chicagoland GC between a customer and a clerk about the customer's snare (which he had brought in to have the head replaced by the sales clerk). The customer asked if the clerk knew anything about this brand of drum which he was unfamiliar with. The clerk told him that he had no clue about who or what the WFL drum company was but it was obvious that they had built a "clone" of a Ludwig snare drum using Ludwig parts and, as such, it probably wasn't worth much.
Yeah....that WFL was a knock off of a Ludwig. But, those Cort "Strats" are the real thing because Fender stopped making the real ones when the Japanese bought the company from Leo Fender. How many untrue "facts" like these are told to consumers by the 19 year old "experts" working on retail sales floors?
Here are some photos I took today. The 1st badge is the bass drum, second is the mounted Tom and the third is the floor. Both toms had what I assume is that baseball bat muffler. It also came with a speed king bass drum pedal. I'm pretty excited.
floor tom legs look wrong, if that's your only problem, nice score!
I agree with burgundy..But that's a minor flaw..
The drums look like they're in excellent condition..
