WHAT THE HECK-A?! A RED-SPARKLE DECCA!

It seems my powers of restoration have been mostly focused on snare drums as of late.  Oh, well.  Snares are the most intricate and delicate drums among the percussion set-up, so getting plenty of practice taking these instruments apart, cleaning them and putting them back together is good, I think.  They are also the easiest drum type to find on Ebay, so I am always running across inexpensive restoration candidates to take on.  The hard part is deciding which ones to purchase and which ones to pass up.

This is my most recent acquisition: a red-sparkle "Decca."  This is a typical Japanese "stencil drum" bearing lugs in the Slingerland "Streamline" style.  If you are unfamiliar with the term "stencil drum," this is just how these cheap Japanese drums are sometimes identified.  They were all manufactured in the same facility in Japan (that later grew into what we know today as "Tama" and "Pearl") using thin luan wood shells and cheap chrome-plated parts designed to copy the look of American drums such as Slingerland, Rogers and Gretsch.  In this way they were able to produce drums that looked like U.S.-made drums on the surface but cost less.  Unfortunately, because the materials used were quite inferior, these drums tend to fall apart and deteriorate much quicker than their better-made, American counterparts.  So it was important that I get started on this restoration as soon as possible.

Here we see the usual decomposition occurring: the wrap is dirty, smudged and dull, the chrome has become "cloudy" and "speckled" with the early stages of pitting, and the screws shown here have become grey and rough instead of smooth and shiny as they were originally.

The screws on the "butt plate" side have deteriorated even further, now turning brown and rusty.  That snare string has seen better days as well.

The muffler knob is in good shape, although the mounting screws need some attention.  On the inside of the drum I found the muffler assembly in excellent shape: very clean and fully functional.  The wood shell was in pristine condition as well, which indicates this drum must have had both top and bottom heads on it most of, if not all, its life.  With the heads off, these cheap luan shells will fade and darken as they are exposed to the elements.  The inner shell on this drum was bright and new-looking which means it had been sealed up and protected.

Sparing you all the gritty little details of my clean-up job, here are the results of my restoration work:

The wrap is now bright and colorful, the chrome is clean and reflective and the snare strings have been replaced with plastic straps that hold better and resist deterioration.  Please note the screws on the butt plate, which have been diligently polished so they are shiny and smooth again (as they should be).

Here is a view of the "throw" side.  You can use that round strainer assembly as a mirror now it is so shiny, and if you didn't notice in the "before" photo, one of the screws didn't match.  It was a "flat head" instead of a "Phillips" like the others.  That has since been remedied as well, as we see here.

And here is the "muffler" side, where we can see those mounting screws looking brand-new now instead of dark and dirty as they were previously.  The red-sparkle wrap looks really good in this photo, too.

As you look at the dramatic transformation in these photos, be aware that no parts on this drum were replaced except for the heads (and that one flat-head screw mentioned previously).  All of the rims, lugs, tension rods and so forth are the existing hardware that was on the drum when I bought it.  Nothing was replaced between the "before" and "after" photos.  Oh, except for all the tension rod washers.  I did replace those because they were all completely rusted.  But that's just a minor detail.

Now I would like to offer something that I don't usually do, but thought I would this one time.  This is a video of my "Snare Test" to see how my Decca drum actually plays now that it is fully restored.  Please keep in mind that I am like this drum used to be: a bit antiquated and rusty.  I'm not trying to do an impressive solo here, I am just knocking around on the Black Vistalites to see how the Decca handles in amongst them.  I took this video using a regular digital camera propped up on my floor tom so the sound and picture quality is not all that great, but I think you can get an idea of how wonderful this old drum plays now.  It really cracks!

Okay, well, if you understood how much time and effort it took me to shoot this brief video, download it to my computer, convert it to a WMV file, upload it to Blogger, post it here and then think of fascinating text to surround it with, you would then understand why I don't usually do this.  It is a royal pain in the buttocks.  I'm a drum polisher, not a video editor nor a cameraman for that matter.  That was way more trouble than it was worth.  Hope you enjoyed it.

Until next time.....