What a beauty, I'd keep the tacked tom wwith the kit, they are far more user friendly than people make out I use them now and then and they may limit tuning possibilities a bit but they can sound great.

I would be loath to sell this, radio king kits have something special about them and this one is from a very interesting period, just on the cusp of the U.S entering the war, the beavertail lug came in in about 1940 and it is not unusual to find cigar and bevertails on the same kit.

Beautiful kit

oh man,

that's a beautiful kit! very jealous!

as far as the lugs are concerned, i've got a WWII radio king kit too that has wood rims and metal lugs, and what i found out was that in the early days of metal rationing (which only applied to instruments but NOT parts) was that they would send the lugs out separate from the shells to stores and they would be assembled at the store. my kit has the same lug configuration as your too so they probably did that for looks too.

adam

brushbaby and a-dub: Thanks for the positive feedback as well as the infomation that you provided. I appreciate it!

Let me try this again. I posted such a large image that it was deleted.

Your Radio King set is most likely from the tail end of the war. In 1944, the government began to loosen the metal restrictions. The aluminum badges usually appear on drums from 1944 until 1946 or so. Brass badges were used during the war until they ran out and could not produce any more. Thus, the aluminum badge. I have never seen a wood lug Rolling Bomber drum with an aluminum badge. Of course, anything was possible back then.

The small beaver tail lugs were introduced in 1940 and could be ordered on ALL drums, including bass drums. It lessened the weight of the drums which appealed to many drummers.

If anyone is interested, I have a web page concerning drums of WWII with lots of images and some advertisements from that era: http://www.coopersvintagedrums.com/war%20effort.htm

Thanks so much for your input and especially for the link to your web page. GREAT information! Thanks so much for sharing!

Glad to do it. I'm happy you enjoyed it. I continually add new content to it as it becomes available to me. I love the old advertisements for the WWII drums.

Mark good to see you join up here!! Your website is a GREAT source of info and you have some beautiful (and rare!) drums as well. ;)

Glenn.

i'll second that emotion! thank you mark. that's who i got my info from in the first place!

adam

Thanks, guys! I appreciate the nice comments. This is a great forum.

...and getting greater with the type of input you were kind enough to share with us!Clapping Happy2