DEEP IN THE HEART OF A DIXIE

Here I go once again with another Snare Drum Restoration Project.  This one is a White Marine Pearl Dixie, which is of course a typical "Made in Japan" model.  It has a sturdy, medium-weight luan shell, a decent-looking badge and a wrap in fairly good condition but very much in need of a sound cleaning.  The chrome is in a pretty poor but definitely salvageable state.

Hardly noticeable to the untrained eye but quickly spotted by the nit-picky anal-retentiveness of myself is the slight crookedness of the "Dixie" badge.  Yes, if you stare at it long enough you can just barely make out that the "E" in "Dixie" is a smidgen higher than the "D."  I wonder if I can fix that, but realize that few other than myself would look closely enough to catch such a tiny defect.

Moving around the drum I get a good view here of the Strainer Assembly which seems to be in good order, but to the right I notice an important part that is missing: the Tone Control Knob.  If I look at the lug between the Strainer and the TC, I can see the bottom tension rod has been removed and used to plug the hole where the TC knob should be.

Circling around to the back I discover another missing element: the Butt Plate.  The snare wires have been fastened to a couple of screws in hopes that this will suffice and keep the drum operational, but I know that this simply will not do.

Here is a look underneath the drum.  This is the seller feigning honesty by showing the obviously broken snare-side head and implying that all one has to do is replace this and the drum will be ready to play.  But the clever eye of the misplacedmtn-guy knows there is much more work to be done here.

So let us now observe how the drum has miraculously recovered after I have worked my magic on this poor, neglected instrument.

Please pardon me if I shout out a resounding "BOO-YAH!"  Look how that WMP wrap cleaned up brilliantly, and how the Tone Control Assembly now has a knob that perfectly matches the one on the Strainer Assembly.  Sometimes I impress even myself.

Here I have also installed a period-correct and properly-performing Butt Plate on the back side, and let us now see how the badge turned out:

Now isn't that much better?  I mean, I didn't use a level or anything, but I did do my best to straighten out that minuscule defect known only to myself and those who actually took the time to read this entire article as if they were actually interested in what I do in my spare time.  If you did, I do indeed thank you from the bottom of my heart.  Why don't you leave a short comment and let me know you were here?

FINAL PROJECT NOTES:

This restoration was completed using all the original parts that were available.  The Butt Plate and TC Knob were legitimate used items salvaged from heartless drum-strippers on Ebay, and naturally the heads and the snare wires (and plastic straps) are brand new.  The tension rods are all existing, but the washers were replaced with new ones, because tension rod washers are always the first things to rust and it is virtually impossible to clean them.  To do so would be maddening and ridiculously tedious, so it just makes more sense to switch them out.  Admittedly the rims are not perfect and some pitting and discoloration is still noticeable when viewed up close, but from a reasonable distance I determined they looked good enough to keep.