I have a set of Catalina Birch's and the Catalina Club's. I use 'em for gigs... The birch kit tunes like a dream. Not quite as easy as vintage Ludwig's or my Camco's. But there are lots of sweet spots in mine. I think eighty bucks is a great buy. Now, the only caveat I have is what the birch will sound like next to your 80's US kit. You may have to play with heads and tunings to get the desired effect. That being said, I'm also sure you can pull it off. It just may take some tweaking.

Nice find! Please post a pic!

Yea tuning should not be that hard. I've gotten pretty good at it. Plus I am planning to buy new matching heads soon so that should help.

The drum has some little 'smudges' or 'marks' on them but I don't mind because the rest of my set has marks like that and you hardly notice them.

Anytime you pick up a 14x14 floor tom for less than a small fortune, you done good. Is that including shipping? If so, then you done real good, if not, it's still a good deal.

As stated above, head selection may well be key to match these shells sonically to each other. Getting this birch shell tuned in to match the USA maple shells will likely take a different head on it that will be darker, less ringy and lower tone. Birch has a higher pitch therefore matching it to maple will take some work.

I'm willing to take on that challenge :D

I'm actually excited to try to tune it to work with the rest of my set.

And it's not including shipping. With shipping its 100. To me its a good deal because I have waited SO long to find the right drum and this is as close as I could get. Every other drum was over 500... too much for me CryBaby