I love old 50-60,s bass drums and toms regardless what wood spieces they are. However, the snare drums are not my cup of tea, esp the wood shells.I believe the metal shell snare drums are much closer to what is offered these days in terms of sound..........Oh yeah; 60,s Motown and R&B IS MY ALL TIME fave music.

I think a lot of us (myself included) are enamored with "vintage", since it's the gear we all wanted when we couldn't afford it. So we buy it up now. Psych Red kits, Vistalites, Ringo kits, etc.

There's also a historical sentiment: the "old days", when they made drums right, the sound from the past, etc. So, for collectors, it's pretty cool to have a timeline of the instrument to show how things have progressed (or stayed the same, or even regressed).

And I do thoroughly believe as wooden kits age, their sound improves. I had a 1959 Ludwig kit that was KILLER. Best sounding kit ever and I wish I never sold it. Today, I have a DW kit that I bought in 2007. Out of the box new, I wasn't totally impressed with the sound. Now, having sat for only 5-6 years, I can tell the wood is changing and the sound is improving. I wonder how great they'll sound in 10-20 years!

Not sentimentality. Sometimes, cool is cool. And a vintage drum set is Coool!

a lot of the old heads on the forum dont know about the newer mom and pop companies that are out now days.

theres other brands now besides, ludwig, dw, tama, pearl. ones that arent mass produced and every peice is "custom" one off's.

some people are like "Old Drums were made better back then..." thats only true to a certain extent. yes they were and still are great drums but there are companys out now that are making drums that dont even come close to "Thens" Technology.

For instance, who would have thought of having a Snare Drum, inside of a snare drum?!?!...and it works beautifully!

SJC drums really knocked it out of the park for me and restored my "faith" in newer drum companies.

they are doing stuff in the drum world that has NEVER BEEN DONE. and to think drums have been around since ANCIENT TIMES...says a lot...

yes i have vintage and new drums. in my opinion the brands that have been around for years really fell off their game in the 90's and are slowly trying to catch up with the new brands.

:2Cents:

just a few kits that really stand out to me. all SJC drums...

Somebody else started a similar thread in the General Section. I'm just going to copy/paste my response from that thread...

Some guys try to blame 'nostalgia' for people's love and interest in vintage drums. It may be in some cases, but I suspect it's the same for other drummers as it is for me... it's the sound I grew up with!

The first set of drums I ever sat down behind belonged to my buddy who was teaching me. It was a 1960 Ludwig, black lacquer kit. 13", 16", 22" w/matching Jazzfest. The sound of -those drums- not only got stuck in my ears and my head, it became 'the sound' I used to compare all other drums to!

Modern drums just sound a bit harsh to my ears and... they all sound the same to me! Vintage drums have some serious 'tone' and individual personalities. Compare any 60's Ludwig, Gretsch, Camco, Slingerland and Rogers together and you'll have five different sounding kits! Each with its character and tonal quality. Aged wood also helps to produce that fat, warm, mellow, round sound. Compare any top of the line modern drums and chances are, if you close your eyes, you won't be able to tell them apart.

That is why I love vintage drums.

John

agreed. im 26. i have a kits that are older than i am. a 78 vistalite set and a 76 Ludwig WMP. I can almost gaurantee if someone next to me had a brand new "high end kit" it would probably blow my Older kits out of the water. Tone, Design , hardware and all......

but the same applies to that "50s-70"s era that everybody loves...

people in the 50's-70's werent playing "vintage kits" from the 20s-30s.

you never saw Bonham on tour with a 1920's jazz kit.

was it that Bonham didnt appreciate Vintage drums? i doubt it. Its just he liked his "newer" Ludwig vistalite kits. it was new then. Drums of the future..... LOL...

I personally think that despite their claims that it's all about sound, 90% of drummers play what they think "looks" good - not just in terms of visual appearance, but what they think shows their style and/or their status. I think very very few drummers actually base their kit on what sounds good, or there would be a whole lot more mix/match sets out there. If I were to base my kit on what sounds best exclusively, I would have my 60s Ludwig rack tom, my 70s Slingerland floor tom, my modern Gretsch Renown bass drum, and my 70s Supraphonic. But I would never gig that kit, because I simply wouldn't like the look of it.

While obviously there are bad drums, decent drums and awesome drums, so much of a drum sound comes from outside sources: head selection, muffling, tensioning/tuning, the player's 'touch', sticks, etc...

Then you get to the studio or gig and you've got mic selection, mic placement, preamp quality, EQ settings... see where I'm going with this?

I've heard modern drums that sound like vintage drums and I can make my vintage drums sound like modern drums. I've heard guys play Pearl Export kits that sound amazing, and guys play $5000 Yamaha kits that sound like cardboard.

I love vintage drums... they sound fine, yes, but mostly I like em' because they project the look and mojo that I want to project, and have history that makes them interesting. I can get the same sound with a modern kit, I just don't want to. I think a lot of guys ramble on and on about sound, but really you can achieve almost any sound you want with any decent set of drums.

I put this to the test a couple of years ago. I was doing an intern sort of thing with a local recording studio, because I wanted to learn more about microphones, mixing, etc.

One of the guys in the studio was a Gretsch guy. Went on and on about how Gretsch drums were the only drums worthy of a true audio engineer, that "Great Gretsch Sound", yada yada... He was making fun of my Renown series drums, saying they were "cheap chinese garbage", and they couldn't produce a sound even close to the USA kits.

So the resident engineer and I did some A/B tests. My Renown kit vs. a USA Gretsch SSB kit and a 90s Ludwig maple kit. All were basically tuned up the same, and all kits were 12/13/16/22. One kit had clear Emperors, one kit had Ambassadors and one had Aquarians and Evans heads. We used the same snare (a modern Premier) for all the recordings. We used the same mics, the same mic placement, and the same EQ settings on all of them. I did a 5 minute sound test doing single notes, rolls, and basic beats.

We played the recordings for Mr. Gretsch and several other musicians, drummers and studio flunkies. Guess how many people guessed which kit was which correctly?

None. Not one person out of over a dozen. There were minor differences in sound (very minor), but NO ONE could say "that is the ludwig kit" or "that is the USA Gretsch kit".

When asked to pick a favorite, our resident expert on "That Great Gretsch Sound" picked my Renown kit. I guess it wasn't cheap chinese garbage after all :)

I'm an old head I guess (nearly 60) and really paid no attention to drums from the late 70's thru the early 90's. Then went away again as I wrapped up my work career, got promoted a couple more times, and retired. That's when I dived back in...

Vintage drums do sound different than modern. Frankly, I've not got a problem with that. I like both, as long as one is comparing apples to apples, quality wise. I've talked to fellows attempting to compare their 90's Tama 'Rockstars' with a Round Badge Gretsch... other than both sets having round drums, it just ain't the same animal.

The two 'newer' kits I own are a 'Legend' kit from around 1990 and my newly acquired 1982 Yamaha 9000 R/C's. I REALLY like how they sound, and actually, they sound quite different. The former being maple, the later birch.

I'm also very fortunate to have a good friend that owns a 'real' drum store (Bentley's in Fresno) who is a walking encyclopedia of percussion. At his shop I'm able to see a lot of the newer kits from well known manufacturers as well as some boutique kits. Some I like, some I don't. You can find drums, mostly boutique, that sound like vintage 60's drums made today, but not many. Oh yeah... and DW drums ARE NOT the same as Camco's. Not by a long mile. My Camco set is an early LA kit, and it's even much different from DW. BTW: I've never been a huge DW fan, I just don't like how they sound...

The improvements I enjoy most is the hardware. There are many of us on this forum that can tell you the fun tales about chasing your bass drum and / or hi hat across the stage.

So, is it nostalgia? Sure, somewhat. But it's also how a kit sounds. Frankly, I think there's room for both old and new, because they are different.

LoLoLoLoYes Sir

That very well could be...We also see that the drum manufacturers are putting quite a bit of money into their R&D dept. trying to re-create the sound of the vintage drums from the 50s through the 70s. Beyond Yamaha Birch and dw maple, they all start to sound the same to me and all lacking character. The hardware innovations have been stellar over the years to say the least, but I wouldn't trade my 1960s Aristocrats or my mid 70s L.A. era drums for anything else available, anywhere, period. Is that sentimentality? or nostalgia? I don't really know? I don't believe so because I am relatively new to Camco and in the 70s growing up, I loved Ludwig Stainless Steel and Fibes fiberglass over Slingerland and Ludwig 3ply drum shells. On the other hand maybe the configuration I use could be considered vintage? 24,13,16,18,& 6.5x14". That sure is an excellent point though, and one can see it in the drums we buy and are usually directly proportionate or reflecting the age of the drummer...band3