Just picked up a fixer upper in pretty good shape:

Plan A: Refurbish the orange drums
Plan B: Take out the snare and make it into a mini drumkit for future wedding gigs - low volume and easy transport YEAH!

Stats: Vintage no-name kit 20x14, 12x8, 16x16, and a 14x5 student snare

All the drums are in a nice orange sparkle, except for the snare which is blue sparkle. Condition is great considering the age of the drums - bearing edge still sharp, no ply separation, little colour fade, even comes with some vintage hardware too! Neat.

To Do List:

Orange drums - clean, buff, polish, restore bottom heads, fix the hi-hat pedal. New DRUMHEADS - maybe. It's gonna get pricy.

Blue "snare" - It's missing everything a normal snare should have, I plan to convert this drum into a shallow 14" tom and eventually add on (or saw off) other pieces and built it into a super portable  mini-drumset. We'll see.

05/30/2007   day 18 Comment 0

Almost done No pictures, but let me tell you what I did with my 2am, 8am, and holidays in the past few weeks: Fixed bass pedal -- made a new linkage anchor with dollar-store plastic parts. It's working fine and going strong. Cleaned & polished everything -- because striving for perfection is a good. And the smell of windex has an uncanny ability to make polishing drums appearing more enjoyable than it ought to be... Changed heads. Changed heads again. Changed heads for the 3rd time -- Now all the drums are sporting single ply w/ home made rings - giving a punchy and smooth sound. Great for easy playing. The bassdrum sounds like your standard soft-rock kick/thump. So unsurprisingly PERFECT. Only the snare drum is left. I am still planning to turn it into a shallow 14" tom to add into the Aqua Satin set (see my first archive). That's it for now.. pictures tomorrow!

05/13/2007   day 1 vintage Orange 005 vintage Orange 006 vintage Orange 003 vintage Orange 004 Comment 0

Picture! I gotta start making sure I always take some before & after pictures. I realized I rarely take pictures of my projects at the beginning stage, and none of you get to share my true joy and frustration throughout the process...