Repairs to a Ludwig 400 Snare drum

Repairs to a Ludwig 400. I bought this 1963 snare drum from ebay. When it arrived it was in worse nick than I expected. I should have asked for more pictures of it really. A fair amount of the chrome is peeling off, as they often do on drums of this age. The heads that came with the drum were terrible - a premier SD extra sensitive on the top (well worn) and a reso ambassador (with a hole in it) on the bottom. The snares on it were made by Ludwig and were very old.
So I bought a new coated Ambassador for the top and a Hazy for the bottom and some new puresound snares.
I polished the drum up with some brasso which is good for all types of metal, then put the drum back together. The next day I noticed that there was a nick in the drum that seemed like it was going to come through the resonant head. Thats when I decided that I'd have to rub the chrome work down.
Anyway, I put it back together gave it a quick tune (I tuned again later) and its a great drum. The only downside is that it didn't stay in tune very well, this may be just down to new heads etc. My Ludwig Acrolite stays in tune much better. This may be down to the tension rods possibly :-)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Ludwig 400
• drums
• drummer
• Gretsch
• repair
• fix
• tune
• paradiddles