drums tuff

Sunday evening as I sat here attempting to post this, I had an equipment failure, or hardware malfunction as we're wont 2 say these days, when the beat up old cord that connects the iPad to an electrical source finally became 2 porous 2 conduct anything. I realized my blogging career was over 4 a day & a half or so. 

So today I got a ride down to Tarjay, got  a new cord & we're back in business. B4 I was so rudely interrupted I wanted to say that the the drum kit I've been putting together is now all but done, with arrival on Saturday of this beautiful little Ludwig Bros. snare drum, year of manufacture not known.

All we know 4 sure is it's an oldie. The drum & and its identifying badge parted quite some time ago; the seller guesses it's an early 30

s instrument, but it could just as easily B from the 20s. Ludwig didn't put serial numbers on any thing until 1963, so there's no way 2 date it.

It's smaller than Ludwig's standard snare of the time, as it's a "juvenile" model -- made 4 a younger person, but not a toy. Except for its size it's exactly like all the other all-metal, single-tension snare drums that came out of the Ludwig plant from shortly before 1920 thru the early 30's, and looks a lot like this instrument in the hands of  Chauncey Morehouse, Bix Biederbecke's favourite drummer.

Slightly larger, and with a dozen lugs rather than the 6 mine came with, the two instruments are nearly identical, except his has a nifty little sound hole between every pair of lugs My piece arrived somewhat the worse for wear, with the bottom head busted, and the lugs rusted. I took the single-tension lugs off an old Kent drum I bought earlier (and which proved unplayable because it's "out of round"), got a new bottom head, and after slapping on some new snares I should have a picture of the whole kit up by mid-week.