During this time when everyone is staying home to avoid the "Coronavirus," I have had time to go back and review some of my older projects that were never featured with a write-up because I either forgot or just didn't care at the time. These were drum sets that I restored and then moved to my storage unit, otherwise known as
"The misplacedmtnman Magnificent M.I.J. Museum," without photographing them first. Sometimes the work I do here gets a little routine and repetitive, so composing interesting stories and riveting descriptions about what I've done is not very easy. And it is time-consuming, which can be a problem when you work five days a week at a real job and only have two days off. As a result, I had a few restoration jobs that were completed without being documented here.
Due to the recent virus scare and the slow-down of the economy, the bosses at my real job closed things down and gave me some wonderful vacation time with no pay. So having plenty of time and energy on my hands, I went and dug these kits back out so I could set them up, take a few pictures and then finally add them to my list of kits in the side bar. I also got a chance to actually sit down and
play these drums, something I enjoy but don't get to do that often. To be able to tune up and bang around on all these instruments that I have salvaged and rescued really brought to life the mission I have here: to restore these abandoned and neglected treasures back to their original purpose. You won't find any drums being re-purposed into coffee tables or chandeliers or clocks on this website.
As you can see if you actually cared and took the time to count the photos in the sidebar, the museum now includes 25 drum sets (the Sapphire-Marble Crown kit was sold so it doesn't count). One day I am going to figure out a way to document all of my snare drums and miscellaneous toms, but as of yet I haven't, so I can only guess that this involves about 100 different projects. The way they are stacked in my storage unit makes them a little hard to get to without unloading a bunch of stuff, so I'm thinking maybe I can use photographs of the stacks to identify all the many snares that I have.
Although this is technically a
"Made-In-Japan" collection, I do have three American kits that I acquired early on: two Ludwig Vistalites and an all-Slingerland chrome kit, so they are considered worthy visitors to the M.I.J. Museum and are allowed to stay. A few other "hybrid" kits have Japanese pieces mixed together with Slingerland and/or Ludwig, so they barely qualify and are included.
Without further uninteresting exposition and unnecessary build-up, here is the first "Past Project" that I would like to spotlight now:
THE RED MARINE PEARL STAR JUNIOR
This was an amazingly cool "little" project that came out really well. I could swear I remember writing this one up and featuring photos of me standing behind this mini-kit, towering over it like Andre the Giant, but I guess I didn't because I can't find any photos or posts related to it on this blog.
So I brought it back out and took pictures again.
This project hit a couple of snags which is to be expected when you're working on a vintage kit that has long-since been discontinued and forgotten about, as was the case with this Star "Junior" kit. I had never seen one before, and I don't think I've seen one since, so this was indeed a rare find.
The wrap on the floor tom had shrunk, separated and peeled away from the wood so my first objective was to see if I could track down a match for this Red Marine Pearl wrap. This I thought would be easy but actually it wasn't. Apparently no one is interested in RMP wraps anymore so I couldn't find anyone who still made it. The closest I could come is the "Red Pearl" wrap from Precision Drum Company that is pictured here, which has too much black in it but had to suffice. Nothing else I came across was remotely similar. I can't believe Red Marine Pearl is not a thing any more. I actually like it quite a bit.
Another difficulty I ran into was locating the down-sized hi-hat stand and bass drum pedal to make this kit actually playable. Sure, a few companies sell these all-inclusive kiddie kits but finding individual pieces of hardware sold separately involves a little bit of searching. In the end I managed to track down a Ludwig hi-hat stand and a no-name junior BD pedal on Ebay. I also bought a little perfectly-sized drum stool to go with the set-up, but unfortunately it doesn't work with an old fat guy like me. The first time I tried to sit on it I wound up flat on my back laughing at myself and hoping no one else had been watching. However, using my regular drum stool I was able to sit awkwardly behind (and slightly above) this kit to play it, and it performs remarkably well.
The primary reason for this is the fact that I overcame the biggest obstacle of all in restoring this drum set: finding new heads. One might think that purchasing modern plastic heads to replace the old paper-thin originals that had faded and deteriorated would be super easy, but there was a small catch. The diameter of the kick drum is 16 inches. The diameter of the snare and the floor tom is 10 inches. But the diameter of the ride tom shell is
9 and 1/4 inches. Yeah. I'm not making that up. I scratched my head and re-measured it a million times (the drum, not my head). This means an 8-inch drum head was too small and a 10-inch was too large. What in the world is a misplacedmtnman to do?
Miraculously I found a 9-inch Remo Smooth Ambassador on Amazon. I don't know how the heck. It just somehow by the grace of Peart appeared, so I ordered two to re-head this drum and they worked perfectly, successfully completing this project. The eerie thing is, I can go back in my Amazon history and find a screen shot of this product, but 9-inch heads from Remo are no longer available as far as I can tell. So it's weird that I was able to acquire these at the time. Sure, a Google search will turn up a few 9-inch doumbek heads (for those of you who know what a
doumbek is), but a
Smooth Ambassador? Nowhere to be found. It's weird. It's.....the
UNEXPLAINED.....
P.S. - Finding a 16" Evans EMAD wasn't exactly a "cake walk" either.....
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