Yeah, in hindsight that wasn't the best call but at the time it was likely done (when the drums were new) that was probably considered the BEST state-of-the-art hardware that money could buy.

I remember when the memri-loc stuff was introduced thinking how much better it was than anything else. All the other brands played catch up to try to match it. Ludwig's Modular hardware was obviously an attempt to meet and exceed the Memri-loc designs. No one gave much thought to the down side of having large diameter pipes sticking into your drums through heavy cast brackets, at least not until Gary Gauger came along with his original RIMS mounts.

Still, I think I'd rather have Gretsch's "Monster" mounts of the time than this on a Gretsch jazz set...and that's saying a lot as that was a pretty abysmal design in itself from that same era.

Thank you Yamaha for taking the Rogers Swivo holder idea and improving on it in the 70's .