SOLVING MAJOR ISSUES WITH THE JAPANESE

Lest you mistake this for a blog post concerning international relations, the Japanese I am referring to here is a 1960's orange-sparkle Ideal snare drum that was manufactured in Japan.  This was an item I picked up on eBay and set about to restore.

As you can see from the lovely picture, this drum looked to be in pretty good shape and I was not planning to have to do much work on it.  HOWEVER, as a perfect example of why you should always closely examine ALL the photographs of a particular Ebay item you are bidding on and not allow the excitement of the auction cause you to overlook important details that could be time-consuming and costly in the end, I failed to notice that the snare strainer on this drum was missing its throw.

Unlike the internal muffler assembly, which was missing completely, the snare strainer is a vital mechanism that is required for the drum to properly operate.  I don't care about the muffler because I never use them.  The snare strainer was a major issue because without the throw, the drum would not function.

BUT this issue was one that was not too difficult to solve.  I soon located a replacement snare strainer - with "throw" intact - and installed it on the drum.

Then I ran into an issue that rookie restorers may not know about when it comes to Japanese drums: Tension rods.  I had cannibalized all the tension rods off of this drum to restore my Red Pearl Drum Mate snare (covered in an earlier post HERE), so I ordered some new tension rods to complete this project.  When I went to put this drum together, the tension rods would not screw in.  They wouldn't fit.

WHY WON'T THESE BRAND NEW TENSION RODS SCREW INTO THE LUGS OF MY JAPANESE SNARE?

ANSWER: The tension rods and swivel nuts on old 1960's Japanese drums have a different threading than the tension rods of American drums.  Therefore you only have two options:

1.) Find some old Jap tension rods with the correct threading for the existing swivel nuts.

2.) Replace the swivel nuts with new ones that have standard threading.

Since Number 2 is actually easier to accomplish than Number 1, here's the simple process I decided to undertake:

1.)  For a typical 5 x 14" six-lug Japanese snare you need twelve 2" tension rods and twelve small swivel nuts.  There are a few companies that offer these replacement parts such as Gibraltar, Pearl and Cannon that are available on Ebay, Amazon, etc.  If the snare has eight or more lugs, you need to increase the number of tension rods and swivel nuts accordingly.  If the snare is deeper than 5" then obviously you need longer tension rods.  You figure it out.  I can't do all the math.

2.) Remove all of the lugs and with a pair of pliers, gently remove the lug springs.  The old swivel nuts will now fall out.

3.) Insert the new swivel nuts into the lug and replace the spring.  Re-attach the lug to the drum and you're done.  Now your Japanese drum has been converted and will accept new, standard-American-thread tension rods.

With all my issues with the Japanese solved, the orange-sparkle Ideal is now finished.

It sounds pretty dang awesome too.