Wow!Andrew.....GREAT score!

Those are very rare Paiste 602 Sound Edge hi hats!>>Worth around $300 alone!

Temple blocks...$100-150...

Other cymbals..?..If 602's also...$350 - $450 maybe.....

So..free Gretsch set for you!

Crazy good deal.....

Thanks Blair, It was too good of a deal to turn down but it was collection only and in the wrong island. They are with a friend now so I'll work out a plan for getting them here at some point. I couldn't believe nobody else locally didn't buy it as it was for sale for a week and it seemed the only interest was from people trying to get it even cheaper.

The hats are indeed 602 SE. the other 2 cymbals are Zildjian As, not sure of sizes yet. Still, the cymbals alone are going to recover 3/4 of the price. Of course shipping will likely hurt and the missing hoops aren't going to be cheap and the FT looks like a 10 lug 18". Probably not a hoop i'm going to find easily

ok, so I now have this kit and have started the clean up. First thing I noticed is the incredible fade. It looks like natural maple but maybe it was once antique maple? The snare cleaned up well and even has the original Responso wires. I sourced an 18" hoop for the floor tom but 13" and 14" hoops for toms seem to be harder to find and outrageously expensive when you factor in international shipping. I may need to improvise there.

The temple blocks looked vintage until... Laughing H

Other than the fade and typical wear and tear for the age the kit's in good shape

That's crazy, looks like maybe walnut Finnish under the lugs?

Either way those drums are renown for their sound.

I have a gran Prix 5pc set. That snare alone is worth 300-500 usd.

Good save.

Maybe it was stained dark, then stripped while lugs were still on? Seems odd though.

thanks guys. The finish hasn't been tampered with it has just faded. The underside of the BD is still quite dark but the rest of the drums have faded evenly to this color. To be honest I think I prefer the color it is now to the color it started out as. I did find one other example of this type of fade on the Nick Hopkins Drums website while searching last night https://nickhopkindrums.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/december-2012.jpg

All I can say is, amazing score! Great set of drums and the finish looks perfect just as they are. Gretsch kits from that era have to grow on you. Once you get hooked on the sound though, you end up like Charlie Watts, playing the same kit all your life. Enjoy.

John

thanks John. I'm looking forward to getting them finished and having a play. The 18" FT is bigger than I'm used to but should be cool.

Andrew - 18"s turn out to be a 'counter intuitive' deal tuning-wise. Logically, you'd want to tune an 18" way down low, as low as you can get it, but if you tune it up a bit until you get a nice (deep) musical sounding note out of it (listen for when the drum really starts to resonate and open up,) and then tune the other toms accordingly, it will give you a thunderous bottom end when you do runs on the toms. That's the fun of having an 18" in the mix, they lend a really heavy bottom end to the overall sound of the kit. Great for rock/blues etc. That's going to be a fun kit to wail on.

John

Do you spell "score" the same in New Zealand as we do in the States? Well done and congrats!