The hoops and clips were steel and had been painted silver at some point but the Ludwig & Ludwig logo was on the top hoop which was a good start! The snares wires were 12 strand "Snappy Snare" ones which were all buckled up and beyond repair. The heads were also shot, the strainer rusted solid, rusty tension rods and an assortment of odd screws were holding it together!
A sorry looking 1920's L & L Heavyweight Brass Snare as received!
At this point I knew I'd have to replace both heads, rods, screws, hoops, wires, possibly the strainer as well, knock out a few dents and carefully get the shell round... another fine mess I'd got myself into!
1. The join for the two shell pieces along the seam can be seen. Typically the two halves are joined using braze and solder.
2. The flange is rolled back and soldered to the shell creating a box section construction, this makes the shell very rigid and strong (some earlier heavyweight drums didn't have the flange soldered to the shell interior though). At 4.5 lbs the shell alone is also fairly heavy in weight, hence the name.
There were a few bad dents here and there which were dealt with quite easily thanks to that tool I built for repairing the Universals and you'll notice I used lug screws from a Supra to hold the tube lugs on (the thread is the same) due to the fact the original slotted pan head screws were missing or chewed up. The good news is the tension rod threads are standard Supra as well so it's easy to source threaded parts for these old drums, unless you are literally hell bent on restoring exactly as it left the factory! I specifically wanted triple flanged hoops rather than single flanged with claw hooks so I wouldn't chew up sticks on rimshots. Some 1950's WFL nickel over brass hoops were added which made it more modern to play as you can see, matched the finish of the drumshell and kept the tone "old". The strainer was stripped, serviced and rebuilt and works fine. I had a butt plate in better condition which was used and I also carefully got the shell round again. Needless to say, to get the drum cleaned up took hours by hand!
I put on a new coated pinstripe for the batter head and ambassador snare side, new wires and cranked it up. I took my time over tuning it to see where the drum liked the head tension and put a 1/2" thick muffling ring (rather than the thicker ones) over the top head to dry out the drum some but leave it's character. I was always very interested in this drum having heard the Universals I built and figured the deeper heavier shell would add more boom to the sound and this was certainly the case, it's got serious volume and balls yet sounds great when played quietly as well.
I put my best Ludwig alloy 14 x 6.5 Super-sensitive with a die cast top hoop next to it (my fav sounding drum at the time) for a comparison and to my amazement the old brass drum kept up quite happily! The alloy drum has less variation of sound, ghost notes sound like a quieter version of full strokes whereas on the brass drum the ghost notes have a different tone to the full strokes which sound like gunshots! When the drum is hit with a full stroke the SS is brighter, crisper and the brass drum more bassy. Will the powerful boom from the heavyweight or the brighter tone of the SS cut through the mix better? That's basically the main consideration here.
Six lug snare have certain advantages too. For a start they hold their tuning better at lower settings due to sharing the tension force between six points instead of eight or ten. This obviously means the force applied to each tension point is higher on a six lug snare at any given tuning, the result of which is the tension rod is less likely to slip and turn. Due to less contact points on the shell they are also more open sounding. It's equally true that the more lugs you have the easier it is to crank the heads tight, once again horses for courses! I actually found the old brass drum sounded better when tuned around medium to my ears so it panned out just right! So far, every musician who has heard the two drums in my home has preferred the tone from the old heavyweight rather than the super sensitive.
Here's what Gary at Noonan Drums had to say when comparing the old two piece shell construction to a modern one piece shelled counterpart: "As far as sound difference goes the two part shells (with the double thickness swage, or bead) have a definate lift in the mid and top end. I believe this is in some part due to the double thickness and therefore more mass at the centre of the drum, or bead."
The drum hooked
up really well and this got me wondering how an 80+ year old antique (at the time)
would stand up against modern competition...so I visited one of the
biggest drum stores in the UK to compare!
With four pairs of ears witnessing the experiment (who all generally agreed with the findings below) a good start I thought to compare the old guy with would be:
Ludwig Brass Supra 14x6.5
They were both very nice drums for sure and it was a close call but neither quite had the range of tone or power I was getting out of my old guy much to everyone's amazement including the shop assistant... next:
Rocket Shells Carbon fibre shelled 14x6.5
These didn't do much for me and got smoked, my apologies to DW fans! Next:
Not even close! Next:
Looked like it had gold plated fittings everywhere and was much prettier to look at than anything else. But it just didn't quite have the same tone and balls... next:
Ludwig Hammered Black Beauty 14x6.5
Some more Ludwigs were brought in and they were very nice but the old guy saw these two off as well and the assistant's jaw was dropping by this point... next:
Now here was a very interesting drum, killer rim shots with no effort and a very nice tone from that cymbal alloy shell. But being a shallower shell size it wasn't the sound I was looking for (lots of top end bite but no grunty bottom end) and it was too different for me to make a constructive comparison between the two. The quality of the sound was beyond question but they do come with a pretty scary price tag to match!
The shop assistant
admitted defeat at
this point with a
grin and shook his
head... the shop
had no drums in
stock that sounded
any better! He gave
the old heavyweight
a look over and was
fascinated... proof
indeed that with
care and attention
"old time" drums
can be hard to
beat! The sound sample page features the drum recorded in the same spec as the shop test but the story doesn't end there. I ditched the 'o' ring recently (which are always all or nothing and this was a thin one) and added an external adjustable muffler which clamps to the top hoop. I dialled it in and immediately I had a more open drum with extra metallic bite. It was a bit like turning up the treble on a hifi and allowed the shell to REALLY sing. It's a noticable improvement and I'm quite sure the drum would now be even further ahead in a similar test!
