One ply ambassadors gets the most free vibration giving the shell the ability to sing. Forget about multi-ply heads on vintage drums. Your taking away from the allure. Great vid
the next time you go to flat sand the drums edge .... rub a pencil lead around the entire edge ... as you are flat sanding you can take a peak after a few moments to see if all of the pencil lead had been removed = FLAT !
well.. you can go wrong.. actually quite a few of 60's 3-ply sound pretty bad. The good ones are amazing, the bad ones... ouch. I restore drums too by the way so I have had probably 30 ludwig 60's kits coming through. Never buy a 3-ply without hearing it first. Some of them have ZERO low end.
Really interesting Michael, thanks. Question: when you recut like you did, how much would you expect to take off from the drum? In other words, if the floor tom is 14" high and you recut the bearing edges, what would it measure afterward, 13.5"? Thanks.
putting the old heads on new sanded shells makes no sense, the drummer should get new heads for eye opening better sound now. the old heads were on the drums for years and have been molded by the faulty bearing edges; now making perfect edges means the old heads are not level anymore, and might actually sound worse than before. Had customers complain that they could not tune their drums after I fixed the edges, but that was due to the old heads being really messed up. New heads, and the drums sound better than ever. Drummers should realize this. Some think that keeping the original heads is actually an acomplishement, but jeeez...
@@adorodrums Agree 100% ☝️ Fresh new heads, properly seating those heads putting pressure in the center to get rid of the wrinkle and actually seat the edge. Tune by ear from there then use a tune-bot to be more precise and fast if you're into that
well.. a lot of old Ludwigs had double 45 edges from the factory. I have a mint 1970 3-ply.. clean and somewhat sharp double 45 factory edges. But yeah, a lot of us like the worn out flat and round Ludwig edges... even though they are often way off the factory edges.
@@HR2635 Re-doing the edges is a must. Most of the times there's no need to use the router. 3-5 mm. wide flat edge might be finished (round over) by hand with no problem. And it becomes buttery smooth edge which follows the contour of the collar of the drumhead.
