I'm having difficulty finding someone here (I moved to a new city a few years ago) to match the paint......from a Gretsch Catalog photo. I may have to just eyeball the paints from swatches in a paint store.

I could use a Martha Stewart Green paint and a brown stain like I did here. About 5yrs ago a friend gave me this nice Royal Star 14" tom. The wood grain was divided on the shell so I finished each side like this. The original finish had been badly damaged. I used some old paint and stain that my wife had left over from a project.

I put a couple coats of wipe-on poly to finish it off.........

An aside: this Royal Star tom sounds very good for a cheap Luan (Asian Mahogany) vertically grained shell.

I settled on gold and brown. First coat today. I think i'll be doing 3 coats at least then wet sand to 1200g or more. Will have to see how this goes with the taping off. It was a little tricky getting the tape straight. I held a string tight from point to point while my wife put the tape on following the string. Seemed to work okay.......so far. The badge was in the middle in the upper half of the shell.....it's going back there - it will be centered in the yellow.

Update for paint project:

2nd coat Home Depot indoor paint - Gold

So your going for a chevron design ?

I hope it turns out something close to this:

Gold paint with tape carefully removed and left to dry before taping off for the brown paint. This paint may not wet sand well I'm thinking because of the rubbery latex texture. Time will tell.

Already looks very cool!

Yes very cool paint job I like!

Thanks. It's far from finished though. I have to have patience with this - I tend to not wait... I'm thinking the painters tape (Frog Tape) might stick too much on the Gold if I don't let it dry thoroughly. I have to tape it off to apply the brown paint on the rest of the drum. After that I have to let everything dry enough so I can wet sand. If I get to the finished-wet-sanding-stage I'm going to put a few coats of wipe-on Poly....Min Wax product over everything. I may even Wet Sand that a little. If I do get that far my plan is to buff the finish out. It's not like I'm doing a complete shellpack or that I'm doing it to sell it.......so the stress level is low haha. If it doesn't work out I have a plan to paint it one colour using Nitrocellulose Lacquer.......

Very difficult to tape next to the gold. First coat of brown.