bonzoleum said:
My recently acquired psych red set of drums are all in the 88xxxx range and date stamped March of 1971.
That of course is hard evidence toward shutting down my opinion, but I cant help but shake: doesnt it make sense that if 750,000 to 830,000 is 1969, that 1,000,000 should be 1971-2? They were still cranking out drums at that time.
See AlsoLudwig serial numbers & mfg. datesVintage Ludwig Badges without Serial Numbers - Prototypes, Limited Editions, Special Orders, Mistakes or Just Badges Lacking Serial Numbers? — Not So Modern DrummerHow To Date 1960s Ludwig Drums By Serial Numbers — Not So Modern DrummerHow To Date 1960's Ludwig Drums by Serial Numbers - Vintage Drum Center
One of the largest misunderstandings about the serial number based dating guides which are online is that they are approximations and cannot be properly grasped without an appreciation for how they were put together. If one presents the information without the proper context, as is done when one simply copies a table without its accompanying explanatory material, then it is easy for the reader to misinterpret the information. The authors of all of the drum dating guides I have read caution the reader about the limitations of their guides, yet these warnings are usually ignored.
There are numerous serial number based guides for Keystone badge drums from the 1960s. While they do not all precisely line up, they all present a similar picture. There was only one guide that ventured into the Blue/Olive badge era. It was written by Rob Cook and published in
The Ludwig Bookin 2003. It has been copied by others, both with and without permission and with and without giving proper credit to Mr. Cook. When I was developing my dating guide for Ludwig drums, Mr. Cook shared with me the raw data which he used when he was developing his dating guide. For the Blue/Olive badge era, Mr. Cook relied heavily upon information provided by Mike Machat and Paolo Sburlati. Mr. Machat self published a long list of serial number and date stamps in 2002. Date stamps were discontinued in about 1971 (although there are a few reports of 1972 date stamps), so Mr. Machat's data only takes us a few years into the Blue/Olive badge era. Mr. Sburloti, who published his book
Ludwig Yesterday and Todayin 1999, estimated dates for many of his drums, but did not have a strong basis for many of these estimates. Mr. Cook attempted to combine and reconciIe information from Mr. Machat and Mr. Sburlati along with information he had obtained from other contributors and his own research. Time has shown that the result is not a particularly good representation of Ludwig's use of serial numbers during this period. I truly appreciate the efforts of Mr. Cook, Mr. Machat and Mr. SburlatiI who took the first steps toward teaching the rest of us about the 1970s era Ludwigs. However, I contend that their information is limited and not particularly reliable. I would suggest that anyone who decides to use a dating guide look deeper into how that guide was developed and seek to understand its limitations. This is especially important with the initial guides for 1970s Ludwigs.
I present analysis of each of the published guides (except for the Rebeats guide written in 2015 which simply borrows from others' work and presents nothing new) in my 2013 Ludwig dating guide. I also explain my methodology to anyone who wants to properly use my dating guide. I hoped to have advanced the understanding of Ludwig's use of serial numbers beyond the multiple guides published in the 1999 - 2005 time frame. I continue to gather information so that future editions of my guide will continue to offer new insight into how Ludwig made their drums.
I understand that bonzoleum's opinion, like that of many in the vintage drum world, is greatly informed by Mr. Cook's initial work with Blue/Olive serial number dating. Mr. Cook wrote the first published guide which addressed the Blue/Olive era. It was the only one available for ten years. It is included in one of the more comprehensive books on Ludwig drums available. It serves as the basis for much of what we know about Ludwig drums. Literally everyone looks to Mr. Cook's table as the basis for understanding Ludwig's use of serial numbers in the 1970s. However, I would suggest that improved information is now available which should alter the common opinions on this particular topic.
I would point out that if one takes Mr. Cook's guide at face value, there were no serial numbers in the regular sequence used during 1970. We jump from 834000 as the highest number in 1969 to 835000 as the lowest number in 1971. Non-use of serial numbers would certainly impact the number of years it would take to reach 1170xxx. Further, if one relies upon Mr. Cook's chart, there were only 60,000 serial numbers used in 1971 and 20,000 used in 1972. We then skip three years without using any serial numbers and use 373,000 serial numbers in 1976. If this erratic behavior does not inspire questions of the accuracy of Mr. Cook's table, I am not sure what will. For anyone who takes this as criticism of Mr. Cook, it is not. He and I have discussed this and Mr. Cook shared information with me and eventually published my dating guides through his Rebeats publishing company. We have a shared goal of improving the information available to the vintage drum world. His effort was the best available in 2003. Ten years later, I published my effort. Ten years from now, someone will improve on what I have done.
