RED AND BLUE AND WOO-WOO-WOO!

During this time when everyone is being told to stay home, I have been getting lots of projects done.  I love unpaid vacations as much as the next guy, so I've been dragging drum sets out of my museum for photography sessions and fixing up snare drums at a feverish pace (but NO, I don't have a fever due to a virus).  All of those hours I would have wasted at work are now spent polishing chrome drum parts while enjoying countless episodes of The Three Stooges, which is what I would rather do anyway.  Restoring drums by myself with Moe, Larry and Curly in the background is something I find very relaxing and fulfilling, as opposed to the stressful and exhausting labor I engage in at my job.  So until the time when the danger has passed and we all return to a normal work schedule, I will continue to pass the time polishing and nyuk, nyuk, nyuk-ing.

Here are photos of the snare drum projects I have completed over the past week or so:

THE RED SPARKLE DIXIE

A BLUE SPARKLE NO-BADGER

THE RED SPARKLE U.S. MERCURY

ANOTHER BLUE SPARKLE NO-BADGER

THE RED SPARKLE NORMA

As you can see, all of my projects have been red and blue lately.  This is because Red and Blue Sparkle Pearl were the two most popular finishes produced during this time period.  So these two colors are what are most commonly found on these vintage Japanese drums now.  Gold Sparkle is also fairly common, but Silver, Champagne (a light tan) or Pink Champagne Sparkle is more rare, and Green Sparkle is very rare.  Almost non-existent.  I have yet to find a green sparkle vintage drum of any type or size unless it was a Ludwig or Slingerland snare going for an extremely high price.  This holds true for MIJs despite the fact that Star Drums did make drums with a Green Sparkle Pearl wrap, as well as a Green Agate Pearl finish.  Green must have just not been a very popular color among drummers back then, and red and blue were what all the "cool kids" chose.

All this aside, I did complete one project with a unique wrap, and that was this little 4" x 10" Made In Japan Junior Snare Drum sporting a Blue Agate Pearl finish.  I restored one exactly like this a long, long time ago (August of 2014) and it was featured in a previous post HERE.  Sometime after that post went up I had a guy contact me saying he had one just like it as a child and it was his first drum ever and how much he would love to finally own one again and so on and so on....

.....so I sold it to him.  I'm an old softy like that.  I let the little drum go knowing that this guy was the only one in the world that could love this mini-drum more than me.  What can I say?  His story touched my heart.  Plus none of it really mattered in the end because I found another one (in better condition) and cleaned it up for myself.

So those are the projects I have been working on lately.  Now if you will excuse me, I will get back to my polishing and The Stooges.  I've made my way through the Curly years and now I'm watching the ones with Shemp.