 Hey everyone, I wanted to let you know that this week's episode has a really cool kind of special feature where there's a bonus episode that you can only get access to if you are a Patreon member of Drum History. So if you're interested in getting that bonus episode, which is about 40 minutes of Vincent and I talking about more 5,000 stuff, some cool stories and additional information, you can head to drumhistorypodcast.com and click the Patreon link and it'll take you there. It's cheap as two bucks a month and you get this special episode and we'll be doing more of these in the future with future guests. So yeah, enjoy this episode. Welcome to the Drum History podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm joined by my good friend Vincent Ward of Vitalizer Drums. Vincent, welcome to the show. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's awesome to have you back because I say that I am friends with everyone who comes on the show, but you and I actually are friends and we've shared a booth at the Chicago show and I have just bounced a lot of ideas off of you because you're a really good listener of the show, which I love, but I'll say, hey, what do you think about this? And then you're kind of an honest opinion, so it's awesome to have you back. You were first on episode five about Speed Kings and now you're back, which is great. Yeah, thank you for, I know a lot of people say this, but thank you for doing the podcast. It's really, if you're a person who has any kind of downtime driving or working, it's really nice to have podcasts and it's really cool to listen to stuff that is in your chosen subject. For sure. Thank you. I appreciate that. Now, so today we're talking about the 5000 pedal, which maybe people know it as the DW 5000 pedal, but there's a long history behind it. But first, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll hop into the topic today, but yeah, tell us about you. Okay. I am a professional restorer and collector of vintage bass drum pedals with emphasis on restoring them so that they're playable while maintaining the historical accuracy and originality of the pedal. So for the last five years, I've operated a business called Vitalizer Drums, which does high level mechanical and cosmetic restorations, primarily for vintage bass drum pedals, but also hi hats and other hardware as well, currently by special requests only, just due to the workload. But during the time period of operating the business, I became a personal collector as well. Just through getting things that I became interested in before I knew it, I had a personal collection that's now fairly large, but restoring pedals is really fun. A lot of people do it themselves. It's very gratifying and there's a big payoff in that if you succeed, you get a playable pedal. A lot of pedals, especially old pedals, they're not operationally longer, but they need something to make them playable again. So that's really fun to do and along the way, you can learn about the history and the evolution of pedals themselves. It's a relatively short history, about 100 or 120 years total, but with the 5,000 pedals specifically, there's a really interesting history in that it dates back to before World War II and is currently still going on with DW pedals. So I would consider myself in the early stages of researching 5,000 pedals, but I've definitely started to devote more time to them. Yeah, that's awesome. And you say you're in the early stages and I say this in a great way. You're very thorough. Creating stuff, even because when we started to get this idea together, you've been working on this outline. I'm sure you're not doing 12 hours a day every seven days a week on it, but really you put together an awesome outline here, which I will include on the drumhistorypodcast.com episode page for this. Anyway, you're very thorough, which I love and very prepared and I'll tell people before we even get into it that the stuff you do with the speed kings and just the restorations are awesome. I mean, it's just so cool for me to see these classic pedals which would really get rusted over and just kind of like nothing would happen with them and you're making them basically new, which is really cool. The 5,000 is specifically interesting for this specific purpose because you can get modern parts from DW that retrofit it. So a problem with speed king, for example, is the only parts for it that are really usable are all discontinued. The new speed king, not all of the parts, not many of them are compatible with the old ones. So you're always trying to source parts, but with the 5,000 pedal, you can source any part you need. And there's also, in addition, a lot of vintage parts available. Sure. Yeah. And that's how we... I know I said it on our episode, which was like 70 or 80 episodes ago, but I sold you some speed king parts that I got at a music auction I went to where I think I paid $10 and it was a little like... I shouldn't have told you that because I sold it to you, but it was like a little box that was just full of old speed king parts. And I think it was like one and a half quote unquote full pedals. And again, knowing that they came back to life with you was super cool. But anyway, without further ado, I think it's a good time to jump in now to the history of the 5,000 pedal that we all know and love. I know I have an old one that is great and then I have a newer double pedal that I can talk about more later. Because it actually broke and I had to get a new chain, which I think there's probably maybe something to talk about with that, with the quality and all that later. But so, yeah, take it away. Cool. Okay. So I'm going to preface this timeline by saying that the information presented here is to the best of my current knowledge. Some of the stuff from my speaking episode did change. So the information is always open to interpretation. I'm always glad to gain new information, even if it's contradictory to what I currently think. To me, there's no hubris in it. It's really just about figuring out the mystery. Because as you'll see, when we start, we're going to start before World War II. And that time period, there is no firsthand accounts anymore. You have the items, but even those are pretty rare. So the history of 5000 starts and especially at the beginning, these are estimated dates because there's no literature during this time period for Martin Fleetfoot, which is the parent company, the company that designed. I wasn't able to find the exact patent, but somewhere in the patent database, you could find this, but they had basically just two products that they made. It seems like they probably just made these pedals. But the Martin Fleetfoot company was based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There's not a lot of definitive information about them because there's no known literature and the pedals themselves are relatively rare. So the 5000 pedal is with the hinged footboard and the 5001 is with the one-piece footboard. I just assigned these numbers because that's what was used a little bit later by Kamco. But you'll see two different types. And it was probably developed before World War II and patented as has been discussed in many other episodes you've done. The whole world kind of stopped during World War II, especially for the countries more directly involved. So let's say that whoever designed it at Martin Fleetfoot, there are pedals that I believe were made before the war because they say patent applied for instead of later where it would say patented or say nothing at all in the footboards. So I think they were developed and patented. It may have been approved before the war or maybe afterwards, but the war happens. The late 40s, 46 comes and you are allowed to use metal again, and that's when the real history begins. So it's already been designed by Martin Fleetfoot. And at this point, I think that they did all of the manufacturing as well. So of this time period, let's say late 40s, early 50s, you see a lot of what I call stencil versions of the 5000 pedal. So you've got your Martin Fleetfoot pedals, but you've also got Gretch floating action, which Martin Fleetfoot was making that for them. It's identical to their pedal, except the casting for the footboard is different. So that's what sort of tells me that the manufacturing, if pedals were manufactured in different places, there would be more differences, but if you put one next to the other, they're identical except for the branding. There's also two other extremely rare versions. People use rare and vintage drums in a very liberal way. I've heard people say that super phonics are rare. There's like a million of them, but there are stencil versions that say power sonic on them. I've only seen one and elite Toronto, which was probably in Canada. Again, I've only seen one, but it's possible there were others. But basically you can imagine Martin Fleetfoot in Minneapolis and they're making pedals for anyone who wants them. That was their business model. Something that is old and wasn't mass produced becomes truly rare. By that I mean, I've probably seen maybe 15 and I look for them ever. I've seen 15. There's certainly more. The thing is that it's a very interesting item to people. A lot of guys have one on their shelf and they wouldn't sell it because it's interesting even if they don't play it. The one that I have, I have three of them currently. You have three of the Martin Fleetfoot pedals? Yeah, that sounds kind of greedy that I have three out of 15 of the world's current population. But I am always willing to sell things if you want one contact me. Two of them were broken when they came to me and the way that they typically break is on the leather hinge. What are those worth? What is the value of those, not to a rude question. I got mine for almost any pedal. If someone doesn't know what it is, you can get for about $50. That seems to be people's going rate of what they think a pedal is worth. What about a pristine mint one that's perfectly restored? That was like, you know. $250 is usually the cap of the market because the people who are willing to pay that much include myself, my friend Steve, who I mentioned last time. I'll try to give him some more shout outs later, but he is exactly like me in terms of the details. Everything to be correct. If for some reason a new old stock or very lightly played Martin Fleetfoot came up, especially if it was pre-war, because that's extremely rare, I would pay a lot of money for it. I'll just say that. Sure. I know we have to move forward here, but can I ask you a couple of quick questions that you can just rattle off the answers to? First off, a comment. I like that it says patent applied for. That's just kind of like unique. It's like, hey, we applied for it. It doesn't mean we're going to get it. It doesn't mean it's pending. I like how it says patent applied for it. That's cool. Then just to clarify, the Martin Fleetfoot pedal is not... You did say this. It's not technically a 5000 or a 5001 pedal. Those are just so we can kind of talk about it and put it into perspective. It's just known as like a Martin Fleetfoot pedal, right? Yeah, because there's no literature you can't know, but I think they probably did call it the 5000 because otherwise, they were making pedals for camco during this period, this period, too. So, OK, yeah, and Gretchen was called something a little bit different. So hopefully the questions will be will be answered as we go through. I want to quickly go over the basic features because they remain pretty constant all the way into today's pedals, which are obviously manufactured in a different way in a different country with different materials. But the design remains the same. So you have cast aluminum components. Aluminum is a good lightweight metal that's also strong and you can you can reinforce it. It's definitely a good a good metal to start with. It has a hex rocker rod. So because it's a hex, it can't rotate or loosen nearly as easily. It's a very solid way to connect it. Even the earliest ones have rocker rod bearings in there. So bearings are the critical aspect of any pedal design that make it play smoothly. The eccentric cam, that's what the what the strap goes over. That's probably how they were awarded their first patent because that eccentric cam is unique enough over anything that came before it that it would warrant being awarded the patent. But that also. Definitely affects the way that the pedal feels at the end of the cam. You have what is referred to as a stroke regulator on later pedals. This is a four point where you can move the position of that into either of these points and it dramatically changes the feel of the pedal and also where the beater sits. Spring adjustment, pretty standard leather strap. And then the leather heel plate hinge is is the last feature that was on Martin Fleetfoot pedals specifically. Cool. And now as you know, as we're doing the features, I'm wondering obviously this pedal, the design has been around for like 80 years. If my math is correct. So, yeah, my question is, is like, what was the predecessor to this? Like what pedals maybe like visually you can kind of describe what would people be using before this in like, let's say the 30s? I guess the speed king would be around, right? I mean, yeah, but is this pretty this was pretty revolutionary, right? I guess it kind of comes down to the question of like, what makes the five thousand so such a game changer in general? It was definitely revolutionary as far as predecessor models, speed king, something completely different. And that's that's its own unique type of pedal with a compression springs. But so the original Ludwig pedal, people always call them 1909 pedals. But that was really just when it was developed and patented. I've never actually seen one that's from 1909. I have some very early ones and I know people have some very early ones. But let's say that it's 1910 or 1911. If you look at that design, it's not dissimilar from a five thousand. And the main feature, of course, is the extension spring. But that's the archetype for all pedals after it. Everything goes, everything kind of goes back to the original pedal. And I'm sure there may have been influences on that pedal as well. But there was also a pedal called the Ludwig Comet. The Comet pedal, if you look at it, is a similar design. It's got some similar features. But yeah, definitely with prior to that, the cast pedals were a heavier material. I'm not exactly sure, sure what it was. But yeah, the five thousand by Martin Fleafoot was definitely very revolutionary for his time. Got it. OK, now we can stick to the outline that you've beautifully put together and I'll stop derailing us. Oh, no, that's OK. OK, so Martin Fleafoot made pedals under their own brand. They also at Gretch and Kamco were the biggest imprint brands. So Gretch, five thousand pedals actually span the entire range from 1946 to 1985, when their pedal lineup changed a little bit. But they called their pedal the four nine five five floating action. And they had a lower price model called the professional for four nine five six. And Gretch never owned any patent or tooling for this pedal. All the manufacturing was done by Martin Fleafoot until it transferred, which we'll get into a little bit later. But you see a lot of Gretch five thousand pedals because the design remains largely unchanged from 1946 to 1965, when Kamco makes some changes. Gretches are primarily leather strap. There's some nylon strap examples from the mid sixties onwards. And fast forwarding way into the early eighties as Gretch also had a single chain turbo version of their pedal. I've never seen a Gretch one piece footboard, but I have seen Kamco one piece footboards from this time period. There's also Gretch pedals. There's one on reverb right now that I've been trying not to buy. There's there's a Gretch I think I'm looking at it on on reverb that has a leather hinge. So that was almost certainly made by Martin Fleafoot prior to Kamco. Gotcha. Yeah. And man, I mean, you just see that pedal board from a mile away and you know that like it's just so iconic. It's like I don't want to say it looks kind of like a fish. But you know what I mean? Like it has that design of like, well, it does look like a fish. It it's very iconic and just it obviously caught on. And I would prefer the the two piece with the the disconnected, you know, the lower the foot plate that's not, you know, because that's just what reminds me of like a normal modern 5000. But it's more it's more versatile to you have to like a one piece footboard where a hinged footboard is going to cater to everybody, including those those people. Everyone's able to to play it without a feeling strange. So still in the the late 40s, early 50s time period, there are Kamco pedals being made as well by Martin Fleafoot. And if you remember from the Kamco episode, Kamco didn't start making drums until the early 60s. In the 50s, they were George Way. So you see the George Way catalog, but also in a catalog that I just found recently through a friend. Kamco did exist in the 50s. They just they sold mostly hardware and accessories and the 5000 pedal. Although, in my opinion, they weren't making it at this time. It seems almost impossible to to determine that. So there's some guesswork involved in that. But the Kamco version is identical to the Gratch version and the Martin Fleafoot version that would being produced at the same time. They're all all the same. So every so these would be created, like you said, in, let's probably Minneapolis, where Martin Fleafoot was doing it. And then just kind of like the white label, you know, Stencil, they would just be stamped with Kamco or George Way or whatever it would say. And then be sent out, right? Yeah, the the footboards were the only part that that was was different. So Gratch probably had to invest in getting that that I made for there. And then the more obscure ones like the Power Sonic and the Elite Toronto, they're much more simple. So that was a may have been a more simple process of doing it. But so the the the next era, I would call the Kamco era, because in in the mid fifties, at some point between 1950 and 1960, this is estimated, Martin Fleafoot decided to sell the patent, the manufacturing, the dies, the tooling, everything. And Kamco bought the it's pretty pretty well accepted that Kamco probably took over everything at this point. They would have been well situated to to do so being a machine shop and with their with their existing. Infrastructure. So at this point, Martin retires. We'll just call him Martin since nobody knows who invented this battle. I was just going to say, is Martin Fleafoot a person? Or do you think that's like a made up? It can't be. It's too good of a name to be real. Like John Baker and he's a baker. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a cool name. And and what's what's cool is that you know, you're always going to be able to identify it because the castings, the castings last a really long time. So it's cool that there's there's another version of the Fleafoot, which I it's a little different. There's they're like painted gold. I've seen ones that are painted green. I think it may have been some kind of international type thing. I just wanted to throw that in there real quick. I didn't find enough definitive information, but I have seen them. There's pictures of them online. If you know something about those, contact me. Cool. OK, so now we're in the Camco era. And this is when the pedal really comes into its own and actually starts being improved upon. So Camco has two models, the five thousand known as the deluxe and the six thousand known as the standard. The only difference between the two is that the six thousand has a instead of having a hex rocker shaft, it has a circular rocker shaft with kind of a cheaper system, but it's still it's still a strap. It doesn't have a cam. It just hooks on to like a little a little kind of why bolt thing. And so you do see those for Camco and Gretch. I've never seen a Fleafoot one so that I'm I'm led to believe that that's a Camco invention. So they produce them for a while without changes. And then in the mid sixties, maybe at this point they're producing drums. They're a bigger company. They probably have bigger budgets. They have an R&D department, I'm sure they start making changes. So the leather strap would stretch out. So they made a nylon strap, which turns out also stretches out. But at the time they may have thought that it was better and it probably was better in terms of long term durability. But they also changed the rocker cam. So it's a pressed steel plate chrome plated instead of the the cast or machined aluminum piece. And they there's a period where they weren't producing the one the one piece footboard. They start producing that again about the mid sixties as the five thousand S and it's a little bit different. It doesn't have a leather hinge. It's actually it's a different a different system. You can tell that they they developed it. But during this period, Camco is still manufacturing the floating actions for nine five fives for Gretch. And you can tell this because you'll you'll see later Gretch ones. They get the same exact changes that the Camco ones do. Again, they're just they're riding together throughout the whole the whole life cycle of the of the five thousand is Camco and Gretch. Until the mid eighties, the one last stencil brand that they briefly had during this time period was Rogers, actually. Roger sets from 1960 to 1963. You could get a Camco five thousand pedal with them. It actually said Camco on there. They called it the Deluxe and they had the the lower priced version as well called the standard and those would be in catalogs. Like a lot of the old Rogers catalogs, you'd look at it and you'd see like, OK, you know, it'd be like swiveling at a hardware. And then you'd look and there'd be like a Camco hi hat stand. Right. I think it would be Camco hi hat stand and bass drum pedal. I I believe they they did have the Camco had. I'm not exactly sure. They also used that basic Walburgan, a kind of like skeleton framed hi hat. A lot of brands use that as their as their basic hi hat during the time period. But it only existed for three years. Camco would have made these pedals and and sent them to them. And then in 63, they they released the Swivematic pedals. And after that, they dropped the Camco pedals to promote their own brand. So that kind of covers the first era of the 5,000 pedals in in America. Any questions? No, I mean, my takeaway is that, like, it's just it became such a like like it was like an instant hit and then it became kind of like an industry standard, where you see that with the old companies, where these drum companies like Gretch, for example, Rogers would say like it's cheaper for us to use this existing, you know, have them manufacture it and kind of like, you know, throw our logo on it. And then then them going into their own production of pedals. But I guess then like in the Rogers example, I've heard this in other episodes where like maybe while they were tooling up to make their own pedals, they said, let's use Camco or something. You know what I mean? Like it can't make your own pedal overnight. It would have just been an option for them to and there could be other other pedals as well. Remember that through the whole period of George Way drums, obviously they existed during a very short specific period of time. They were selling a Camco pedal. They didn't have their own imprint with their own footboard. It was probably well, it was definitely way cheaper to just get the Camco version. And yeah, everything I've heard about John Roshan, who was the person who was in charge of Camco during this time period, he seemed like a pretty ruthless guy. You know, that's what I heard. He was he was definitely trying to aggressively grow and expand his his company. And yeah, you can check out other episodes for more history of that. The history of Camco with Joe LaWoma. He talks about a little bit. Rhonda Nett talks about it a little bit as well in his episode. Yeah, but it makes sense. If you're going to speculate, you want to use the information available to you. So if this was the guy who was making decisions during this time period, then everything seems to to make sense. Yeah. And Camco, I mean, from a collectability standpoint, I think everything Camco and you have Camco drums yourself. I mean, there's just something very collectible about Camco. Yeah. And I mean, they're super nice drums and everything. But like even the the Camco 5000 pedal just seems like it's got a higher value than than the rest, maybe not the Martin fleet foot. But no, people definitely assign a premium to anything with the word Camco on it. You see a little practice pad or a snare stand or something. It's just a basic, it's nothing exactly really special. But if it says Camco on it, the price is definitely higher than other items that are that are similar. That's just the way it's been for a while and probably will be due to rare rarity primarily. Sure. Sure. So there is an interesting little branch in the 5000 tree that I want to mention briefly, and that is a company called John Gray, which has been covered in in I think a few of your different episodes that cover British brands, but they're a British brand. And from 1947 through 1967, when they were producing a lot of drum sets, they had two pedals, the 5189 Autocrat and the 5210 Broadway. And couldn't possibly be a coincidence. The design of this pedal, it is identical to a Martin fleet foot. So based on what I've heard from some of your other guests, it's extremely hard to enforce patent patent disputes in other countries. So I think what John Gray probably did was they just got a hold of one and they reverse engineered it. And it's almost identical. You could tell it wasn't made by Martin fleet foot, so it's not like it's a stencil brand. But those are great pedals, too. They have leather hinges. They're they're pretty rare as well. And also, like I said, some of them are broken. But I thought that was really interesting that they that they that they reverse engineered the Martin fleet foot and kind of just unapologetically sold it as their own product. You're totally you're totally right, because it's it's exactly like I think Ron Donet said about I said, hey, what about Heyman drums with their, you know, the turret, the round lug? I mean, what about that? That was kind of a camco thing. And he said, yeah, but it's that's probably what you're referring to, is it's so hard to enforce it. And it's kind of like, well, OK, so camco or Martin fleet foot, whatever, had that same design and they kind of did the exact same thing, where they just like, you know, these Yankees made this pedal. Let's let's let's take it. And well, it was a good design. It was a good design, too. So from their perspective, they probably were focusing more on their drum line. You have to have a pedal in there. If you're going to copy one and risk that risk that you might as well copy a good one. So and I think that so the the Accenture Cam is probably the focus of the original Martin fleet foot patent. The John Gray Cam is probably not coincidentally a little bit different, just a slightly different shape. And they advertise that in their in their catalog as well. But that's just an interesting little branch. It kind of happens, you know, simultaneously, but at first I thought, you know, this must have been made by Martin fleet foot, but the more I looked at it and I really like to get actual examples of these pedals. So I have at least one of all of these pedals that I I sort of collected them. Basically, once I started the process of trying to figure out the timeline, I I just went all the way in with it and put in the effort to find the early ones. But I have a really a really nice autocrack. I have not seen a broad way available. They're probably pretty rare, but I'm sure they're exactly. I'm sure they're available in the UK much more readily. Sure. So in the early 70s, this is this, I consider a new era for the five thousand pedal because Camco hasn't changed it much during this time period. In fact, I don't think they make any changes at all in the 70s. But if you remember from your Camco episode, Camco had some movement. So they they went from Oklahoma to Chinute to L.A. And as as things moved, the pedal did not change. It's still a great pedal, but it does have some issues. There was a drum shop in New York called Frank Ippolito's pro percussion, I believe everyone probably just referred to it as Ippolito's. But in the early 70s, there was a guy working there named Al Duffy. And he he is no longer with us, but he he left a lot of really good information and he left specifically a couple of different legacies in terms of things that he invented. But he he was the first person to people were coming to him with these pedals, where maybe he just noticed this shortcoming that the leather stretches and breaks. But when it stretches, your foot after it does that a certain a certain amount, the footboard is going to hit the T screw for the for the toe clamp, and that's going to make a clicking sound. It's also going to damage your your footboard. So his first thought was, well, there needs to be a chain here. So he starts modifying these pedals and pretty pretty quickly he develops the chain, the single chain and sprocket system. And these pedals I've been really, really looking out for. So I they're not terribly, terribly rare. I have four of them right now, pedals that were from various eras, but they were certainly modified at Ippolito's. And he had he had the the idea to he knew it was a good enough idea or someone did there. Maybe it was Frank Ippolito, but they patented it before they started doing it. So cool. One of the earliest ones I have says something similar, patent pending on it. And then later, once the patent was awarded, they actually put the patent number in there. But these ones I find extremely interesting because of the parallels to what I do myself. So it is just really cool, especially on the early ones, to see that whoever did it, if it was Al Duffy or someone that he trained to do it, actually took metal punches and punched various things in there, usually Ippolito's. Sometimes I think the ones that he did, he also punched his name in there. So I have one actually. And the cool thing about hand punching the letters is it's never going to look perfect. But yeah, it's it's it was it was patented. Elvin June started using it immediately and it really solved that initial problem. It was a huge improvement. The chain did not stretch and a nice side effect of that sprocket and chain system is that it feels really smooth compared to a strap drive. It's just a lot smoother of an action. Yeah, I've had a strap drive Ludwig pedal and it was just like. I mean, going from I think after that, I got like a iron cobra or something and it was like, man, this is just it's the evolution is clear. It's like, OK, this got better for a reason. Like obviously it was what they had, but it's just. I mean, but I'm sure people like them now and I'm sure I would like it if it was well maintained. But the the the chain is obviously much more modern. So for people who were like maybe looking around for pedals. So if it says Ippolitos or Al Duffy, then you know, you've found a super rare early pedal, right? I don't know if it's rare that there's a there's a guy who is alive and on Facebook, who was part of the process. He he was trained probably by Al Duffy to produce them. And I've heard him say maybe it was an exaggeration that he did hundreds of them. So OK, it's and they come to me in different states. One of them that I got had been completely worn out. And I made the decision rather than keeping it as kind of like a cool relic that was completely unplayable, I just fixed it. So as the as the next restore, I went in and built upon the work that had already been done. And I had to swap out a few parts that were that were worn. But I think there's a fair amount of them out there. If you see a camco five thousand or a Gretch and it has a chain drive, then you can look on there and usually it will be stamped. But yeah, that's a pedal that was converted at Ippolitos in New York. So it's cool. It's cool to think that they're all coming from this one location. And yeah, it would have been a big improvement to people, people who are playing playing the pedals would have been an immediate improvement. And some people do like the Strap Drive feel. Some people like the chain, but for modern pedals, people are used to the chain feel. You can get a floor plate modification as well. That was less popular. I don't see too many of those. So in 1978, a couple of things happened. Al Duffy moves to Nashville to work for Pearl, I believe. Camco shuts their doors and DW, which is a small ish company producing primarily canister thrones at that time, if I recall correctly, in the late 70s, they buy up all of the all of the camco stuff and included in that is the pedal. And they really put a lot of work into it right away. There's a good early DW piece of literature on drum archive that that shows this, but they make some serious expansions. So I'm just going to go over really quickly. They had six different models. So remember, this is expanding from the three that were available previously. Five thousand C chain and sprocket, five thousand CX chain and sprocket. But the sprocket is cut. The original ones have a full circle, which will mess up your shoe over time. So that's all modern ones have the cut in there. But at first that was like an option you could get. Five thousand one CX. That's the chain and sprocket with with the cut sprocket and the one piece foot board. The the five thousand just regular five thousand is nylon strap. Five thousand one nylon strap with a one piece foot board. And in the mid eighties, they have the five thousand two, which is the double pedal. So chain, they're all chain and sprocket. And that's the double pedal. That that's their that's their six different models that they had. Sure. Yeah. That time period early eighties. It's interesting to me that the five thousand, you know, straight, the five thousand is nylon strap and the five thousand C is chain because you'd think that like, I don't know, I guess nylon is good too. But I think it would be like the standard would be the chain. But I guess it's just a different time. Not at that time. Not at that time. Sure. There was a lot going on at that time. That's when Japanese companies first started coming up as well. And I'm going to try to be brief with some of this next information because it can get very dense. And if you want to discuss it more in the Patreon episode, we can we can do that. But there's a lot going on during during this time period. And a nylon strap pedal is the standard during that that time period. But there's a lot of diversification and refinement going on. They definitely did not. Just leave the pedal as is. And the reason they were able to produce the chain and sprocket is because they DW had to also buy the patent from Ippolito. And I'm not exactly sure when that happened, but it had to have been almost simultaneously because they were doing it. Or maybe it was licensed. Who knows what the deal actually was. But DW, I think, is a company that's known for really. Really doing things well and properly. Yeah, they would never they would never have just stolen the idea. They absolutely went there and bought bought the patent, which was basically just him showing showing how it's done. And early DW pedals, you see a lot of the chain drives of varying levels of sophistication. At one point, they kind of tried to solder it on. And then some of them are held together with pins. But they to me, what that shows is that they they were experimenting. It wasn't like, all right, you know, start mass producing these that they really wanted to see what they could change and improve on on the pedals. So in 1983, the guy who invented the five thousand two, his name is Dwayne Livingston, and he is alive and on on Facebook. And he'll he'll tell you about you know, about the five thousand two, the early ones are. Very interesting. Look, they have three towers, so it's it's a pretty primitive design, but it works and it was at the time, probably the only practical way to get a double pedal. There was there's double pedals going all the way back into the early nineteen teens. Yeah. That are really cool. It's really cool to see one this that old. Think about somebody playing Slayer on it or something. You know, it's just like it was a different motivation, but the design is remarkably similar. So yeah, yeah. But this was the first like modern. This was a big step forward. OK, yeah, for sure. And especially because the DW doesn't leave anything alone, that their R&D department is is really. Really active. So the five thousand two changed a lot between then and now. If you look at a five thousand two, it doesn't have three towers. You know, it has a little change in the casting. It's pretty pretty really a little. Change to make to the pedal, but I'm really glad that DW did acquire those the rights to produce that pedal because. It was definitely a good brand to carry the torch. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And shout out to Dwayne Livingston, obviously, who you've talked to a lot and I've talked to him and he's a very nice guy. And we were going to get multiple people on here, but it kind of just is more streamlined to have. Yeah, obviously Vincent kind of do the whole the whole thing. So thank you to Dwayne, but that's awesome. It's so cool that just like a guy. I mean, I'm sure he was in the drum industry and everything, but kind of invented this. Yeah, super cool necessity is the mother of invention. He probably wanted didn't was tired to carry around two bass drums and needed to play something with double bass. Yeah. So it's important to note, too, that during this time period, DW is still producing pedals for Gretsch. They're still called the floating action. You could get either nylon or chain drive. So Gretsch had their own chain drive version. And in the in the 90s, most brands are really feeling the the effect of the Japanese brands coming into the market so strong with such a strong product. And they're able to produce it cheaper. So I'm not sure when the Japanese brands started utilizing Chinese or Taiwanese production. But most American companies also went down this path during that time period. Probably because they had no choice. It's very it's a lot more expensive to manufacture parts and to assemble in the United States. So DW, I believe this is just speculation. I believe made that change in two parts, which was a really good way to do it. I think they probably got they outsourced all of their parts to Taiwan or China first, had them shipped over to America, and then they were assembled and quality checked in their factory in Oxford, California. So that gives you a better chance to oversee your product directly rather than outsourcing the entire process. But later on, probably early 2000s, they did move. As far as I can tell, all of their production and assembly out of the United States. So you could where it used to say USA on the football. It starts saying the drummers choice. And gotcha. I don't want to get into. We can talk about this in the Patreon episode a little bit more if you'd like, but there's a lot of speculation about this move to a more global economy and things being produced in Taiwan or China and whether they're better or worse. But these companies almost certainly did not have a choice. If they wanted to continue existing, they had to follow this trend. Otherwise, just go out of business. And so them moving their production to Taiwan and China. Taiwan is as far as I can tell. It's pretty it's very similar to to America in terms of like having a safe workplace, being fair in terms of the number of of hours people have to work. They do get paid, obviously, a lot less than an American worker would get paid. But the factories there are not. They're not less less sophisticated than America. It's really just it's an efficient, cheaper way to produce your items. And if you oversee the process, there's really not too much of a loss in in quality, especially with DW, specifically the way they did it. I never noticed. Most people would think and I would think this, too, that that their their products they're currently producing are still very good. They're they're not. Yeah, they don't have a ton of issues. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. OK, so Tama Kamcos, most people have probably seen a Kamco pedal that was made in Japan and has the Tama branding on it. When Kamco split, Tama got the name, but they must have also either negotiated or or figured out a way to produce their own chain drive pedal I'm not exactly sure how that would have worked. But they have their own pedal called the six, seven, three, five. And it's very similar to the chain drive, five thousand, but definitely made in their own in their own way. Like all the castings are different. It's it's similar, but it's really just kind of a better, more streamlined, heavy duty version of the Kamco five thousand pedal from America. Yeah, it looks, I guess, thicker is not the right word, but it definitely looks a little more beefy, kind of as you get into that, like eighties-ish pedals and hardware where everything became thicker and beefier. It it definitely has that feel. I like this period, too, for some odd reason, I didn't know about it. And then like when I found out about the Tama Kamco stuff, it was just like one of those like just that classic drum history stuff is like Tama gets the name and the rights to produce the pedal of their own. But like DW gets the machine stuff. Correct. They get all the actual stuff. And I believe the patents as well. So what most likely happened was if there was some kind of negotiation, which there must have been to have divided it that way, at some point, Tama included the right to make their own pedal using using that design. And they may have they may have just done it. But for the nineties, that was a pretty Tama had their own pedal. And it's the style for Japanese pedals at that point was definitely bigger, is better. Everything was really heavy duty. But they had that pedal in there in their lineup for most of the nineties. And I believe it went out of production, maybe in the early 2000s. They did do a reissue recently. I'm not sure if they're still making that. But Kamco had a whole line of pedals in in the nineties. So the HP 35 is the regular Kamco chain drive. They had HP 38, which is called a Kamco extra light. I'm not sure what that is. I'm not sure if I've ever seen one of those. Maybe it was I mean, it's in the catalog. I've never seen it. Probably there was some kind of slight difference that that made it more lightweight, I guess. And then they had their own pedals that were kind of derivative. One called the Flexi Flyer, the Pro Beat. You can just look at nineties Tama catalogs to see this. But in there is the 5000 pedals. So it's cool at that point. You've started in Milwaukee. You've moved all around the United States. You've kind of gone off to England a little bit. And now you're off in Japan. And the the amount of derivative pedals that that came of that design made by Tama is uncountable. I still see pedals made today by big companies that are essentially just the 5000. So it really took that design and made it available to everyone. Yeah. Can I ask, before we move on, when did, so with DW, obviously the split with Tama and DW getting the Camco stuff happened in 78, did DW pretty much instantly decide to make the like kind of iconic red plate on the bottom? Or was that a little bit later? There's a really cool evolution of the DW pedals. And when I get further down the rabbit hole, I might start collecting and documenting these because my goal is to do the same thing I've done with Speed King, which is to meticulously analyze and try to map out the history of the whole timeline. My plan is to do that with the 5000 pedal as well. So I'm not quite there yet. But no, the earlier the earlier ones did not have the red floor plate. It was it was more silver and then it was black. And the the the footboards. I mean, it's the same as the other other areas where things slowly start changing out. Just imagine that times 10 because of DW's R&D department was trying different things. And the really cool thing DW's done and I thank them for this because it makes repairing and restoring these pedals so easy is that modern DW parts work on all areas, even going back to Martin Fleetfoot. I could put a brand new Delta hinge on a Martin Fleetfoot and it will absolutely play better. That's awesome. And all different kinds of things. So if something broke, if you wanted something more substantial, there they're what I call infinitely repairable. There's enough because they're still being produced and the parts are kind of expensive. But because there's a lot of parts available and they're still being produced, you will always be able to repair your DW pedal. So that brings us into what I call the modern DW era and that's 2000 until present. I'm going to go over quickly what models they still offer to my best knowledge. This may be slightly out of date. So they've got a double chain turbo and a double chain accelerator. I'm going to really quickly try to explain the difference between turbo and accelerator. It's not easy to do. But if you imagine a turbo cam is a perfect circle, an accelerator is a different shape. And what that does is it changes the action the way that the beater kind of throws towards the head and the way that it responds. It's a little bit quicker and it can also be more powerful. Turbo is what most people are used to. If you are used to playing a DW turbo and you stepped on an accelerator, it would feel different to you probably. But turbo is a very smooth action. Most people, I know, prefer that. So then you've got a solid footboard. Those are just accelerator, a heelless pedal, also just accelerator, and an XF, which has a longer footboard also available in just accelerator. And these are 6,000 pedals technically, but you can still get a single chain turbo from DW. It's a 6,000. If you look at it, you'll say that looks exactly like a 5,000. I'm not exactly sure how they've done their numbers. And you can get that in either a single chain turbo or accelerator. And you can also, just like the really old school ones from 40 years ago now, when they were developing them, you can still get a nylon strap pedal from DW. It's called a 6,000 NX, if you want to look that up. So even though all the production is done in, I would guess, Taiwan, I think a lot of people are looking to Taiwan at this point as a really good option for manufacturing. It may be possible that the pedals are still assembled or quality checks in Oxnard. I would need to get that from somebody who had firsthand knowledge. But overall, the quality and reputation was maintained, which is not what you can say for a lot of reissues or pedals that people liked in the past and people are still trying to make them. It's very difficult to, I think DW did a really amazing job at maintaining the quality and reputation of the 5,000 pedal. And it would have been maybe easier to discontinue and say, okay, let's develop a completely new pedal, which is sort of what they did with the 9,000 in the early 2000s. But they really kept the 5,000 on the map and still continue to offer parts for it. So I think that was a really smart way to do it. I agree. And I would say in both of our lifetimes, it's always existed. So if you didn't tell me that this pedal goes back to technically the 40s, I would just think it was like an awesome kind of modern pedal. Obviously DW did so much updating and all that, but it's never like a, like how the Speed King came back. It was like, to me, it's like a, it doesn't have that like, this is a vintage pedal that people still use to be like, you know, or Rogers new pedals. It's like, it's not like a throwback. It's like a, I use it because I like it sort of thing. Like I've always liked it. So it's, yeah. I mean, 5,000 and I don't know this, but it has to be the most popular pedal ever. Yeah. I just, because I asked everybody for a really long time, especially at drum shows, well, hey, what kind of pedal do you play? And people either said a 5,000 or a pedal that was derivative of the 5,000. So it's interesting. A lot of these companies, Rogers and Ludwig specifically, they have their reissued pedals. So you can get a new Swivematic, you can get a new Speed King. I think that the path that those companies have taken is they need to sort of pay homage to their legacy. A lot of people were really upset when they took away the Speed King. And in fact, they even made a group on Facebook about it that ended up being an awesome group for all different kinds of discussions on Speed Kings. But yeah, people, they have to offer some of these classic items. And I think it's really cool to do that. If you're a modern brand, you have to have your own pedal. So I'm not knocking what other companies do. But what I can say is that I think DW did it in a very intelligent way. I would agree completely. Yeah. So the DW 9,000, I'll talk about very briefly. It was invented by a guy named Lucas Jacobson and I met him at the last Chicago show 2019. He was exhibiting, but he had the prototype there. And I have a funny picture of me holding the prototype really excited looking at it because it's the very first 9,000 pedals. So a lot of people play 9,000 as their main pedal. I remember that's the pedal I played before I found Speed Kings. Even without knowing anything as a teenager, I wanted the 9,000 because it was the nicest one. But if you look at that pedal, it is a lot different. I mean, it's not a 5,000 pedal, especially the double pedal has so many changes, so many bearings. That pedal is ridiculously smooth. But yeah, that was developed in 2002, I believe, by Lucas Jacobson. And however the design or the patent or licensing was transferred over to DW, they really created that. You can view that as an extension of the 5,000 because that's probably the starting point. And then he went from there with figuring out his different mechanism and action. I remember when they came out, I was like 12, so I was pretty young. But I just remember thinking like seeing it and just the look of it. I know it's not made of titanium, but it looks so expensive. And it is expensive. This is like the holy grail. It's a really nice pedal. No one's going to buy a 9,000 pedal. Very few people, let me rephrase, are going to buy a 9,000 pedal and complain about it because people will always complain about things. But it's a great pedal. It's reliable and they use the same principles. So there's a lot of parts that transfer over. But if your 9,000 pedal breaks, and I know this because I've repaired several of them. It's a lot cheaper to repair your 9,000 than it is to buy a brand new one. And they're infinitely repairable. Even the cast pieces, if you break a cast piece, it can be replaced. There's no reason to try to weld it back together or anything. It's easier just to replace it. But they also make another pedal and I'll just say I don't really know anything about this. But they have a pedal that is what's it called, like a machine drive pedal or something. I should have done the research for this. But they actually make a pedal that is made of machined aluminum, like CNC'd aluminum. And it's made in the United States. And it's a really nice pedal, but it's also like $900 for a single. So that's out of the reach of almost anyone. But if you want an example of how expensive it is to make things of really nice materials in the United States with the labor and environmental regulations and all the things that bring the price up, that's the ultimate example, a $900 pedal. I'm sure it's great. I've never actually played one because, yeah. But I will sum to Amshur. I'm sure it's a very nice pedal. Well, before I mentioned, no, I know it's not made of titanium. Now I remember they do make the DW 9000 titanium, which I remember seeing I think at a guitar center. I was like, this pedal like a regular 9000, which I've played and I have a friend who uses it. But the regular double pedals like 650 bucks and the titanium, I mean, you see them used now for, I mean, they're over $1,000. I think that was a limited edition thing too. It's not only maybe that it's superior materials, but also they only made maybe a certain number of them. I've seen like gold plated ones too. That's one cool thing. I haven't gone down this path too far yet, but anything is possible. So you could actually, I could take a regular 9000 pedal and make it completely gold plated. It would be extremely expensive to do so. But that's another thing that I want to look into in the future is maybe more cosmetic things. So maybe a 9000, but your tower is a different color other than the standard black. Because a lot of people are always going to play a 9000 or maybe a 5000 pedal, but they are customizable as well in terms of the cosmetic aspect. Yeah, people love that. 9,002 double pedal that's gold plated on eBay for $2,600. Grab it. There you go. Dude, I just bought it while we're talking. Man, I was about to buy it. Yeah. No. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, that's the 9000s definitely. And that's kind of the last, really the big last in the evolution up till this point, right? Yeah. That's the end of my timeline because they're still producing these pedals. So it will go on. There may be changes in the future, but probably not a lot because it started off as a good design. All of the problems over time as we discussed by various people in the line, all of the problems were addressed. And now it's at a point where it can just sort of sustain itself. And that's why as a business, one of the big problems with Speed Kings was the eras that they produced bad ones really hurt them. And everyone will always remember that as, oh, well, Speed Kings are nice, but this. So they've really kind of kept up that reputation. And now is the point where they really get to capitalize on that, where it's super streamlined. They've got their factory overseas. That's pumping them out to however many they need and they're good reliable pedals. So yeah, that's basically the end of the timeline. In the Patreon episode, there's some other stuff that I'll get into some more details because there's another era that I would call the derivative era. And that actually, I have that listed as 1960 to present. So that would cover all of the pedals that were made after the Martin Fleet foot that were designed by, you know, influenced by the 5000 pedal. And there's a lot of them. I'm sure. I mean, it's sort of one of those things where once you see, if you're a, you know, a drum builder or like a manufacturer, once you see it, you can't unsee it and know that it's working. You're like, okay, well, of course it's going to influence you. And this is like, you know, why not do that? But that's cool. Well, all right. So as we hit the end of the timeline here, I think now is the perfect time. First, I want to say a big thank you. And I should have done this earlier. And I hope I pronounced his last name right. Krasuski, who started the vintage drum workshop slash camco 5000 pedals Facebook page. And he sent me a message a long time ago and was just talking about it and doing the episode. And I think I said, yeah, Vincent and I have actually been talking about it for, because we've been talking about this for a while, but he connected me with Dwayne and it just, again, super nice guy, very passionate. So everyone should go and join that Facebook group vintage drum workshop slash camco 5000 pedals. So thank you to Kyle. So Vincent, why don't we, again, tell people where they can find you because the stuff you do is just awesome. And like maybe describe a little bit about, you know, what you can do for people who are looking for an old Speed King or, you know, beyond that other stuff you can do. Okay, so Vitalizer for the past five years has been heavily focused on Speed Kings. I came up with a modification for the Speed Kings, which really, really helps them out a lot. And it's so the demand for Speed Kings, especially from 2014 onwards was really high because Ludwig stopped stop making them. So the reissued Speed King is coming out now, but that's kind of been nice in that it's allowed me to start working on some other pedals. A little bit this year did end up being really busy for Speed Kings as well. But about a year ago, I started doing what I would consider the research and development for other types of pedals. The first one I did was the speed Ludwig Speedmaster, which is another strap drive extension spring pedal. And then I moved to the 5000. I've also done Swivematic and I'm going to do a Slingerland Tempo King as well in the future. But yeah, I'm working on all of those pedals. So similar to how Ipalitos had their shop that did repairs and modifications. I do the same thing for Speed Kings as well as 5000 pedals. And you can buy pedals off of the website vitalizerdromes.com and you can also send your pedals in to be repaired or modified. And the new service introduced will be 5000. The price is going to be cheaper than Speed King because I can do them faster. But yeah, that's the basic plan for the business moving forward. I am going to do hi-hat stands and other hardware will hopefully be introduced at some point as well because I know there's a demand for it. But yeah, I restructured the website and the Reverb Store so there's always pedals in stock and ready to ship. That's the biggest change from last time I talked to you. Before, you almost always had to wait in some way in order to get your pedal. But what I do now is I always make time to make sure. And so for 5000 pedals, you'll see I've got maybe like 10 or so that will be listed between now and the first couple of weeks of the new year. And yeah, customer send-ins continue to be really steady. I always thought at some point they would fall off a little bit. But I have a lot of repeat customers and I have a lot of new customers. My advertising is almost entirely word of mouth. I've gotten a lot of business from the previous podcast as well. Good, good, good. Thank you for that. So the service structure is a little different than it used to be. I've created some basic services which are cheaper and take less time. But there's also the same high level services. Relic, which I mentioned last time, which is original paint, but mirror polished footboard and Super, which is refinished paint and the mirror polishing. Any color you want. I've really gotten that process a lot more streamlined. So if you want a pink Camco 5000, you can absolutely do that. That's awesome. It's not too difficult and I have lots more of, you know, more standard colors as well. Cool. Man, I think that's the way of the future is I think everyone loves Speed Kings. But as you said, the 5000 is hands down probably one of the most, you know, played pedals in the world. So for you to be taking them and modify them. Why not? I mean, people love that stuff down the road. I'd love to send you my old 5000 pedal, which I think is 90s. I would imagine it says made in the USA. Nice. So and maybe I'll post some pictures of it. It's really it's been dusty since the day I got it. I think I try to trade it. I traded a DW practice pad kit for it, one of those which I'm sure people know the little one with the arms and white pads, which I never used. So I traded that for it probably 10 or 15 years ago. And I love the thing. But yeah, this is an awesome episode. And again, per usual, I appreciate you taking the time and being so prepared. And what I'll do too is link in the description. I'm going to put the link to your old episode because we keep talking about it. And again, for people, they can go to drumhistorypodcast.com and then find this episode. And then there I'll put Vincent's whole timeline. So it's going to be awesome. But again, Vincent, I appreciate you doing this and taking the time to be on the show and sharing your knowledge. And everyone can go to vitalizerdrums.com and learn more about what he's got. And on that note, Vincent, thanks for being on the show. Thank you, Bart. I appreciate it. If you like this podcast, find me on social media at drumhistory and please share, rate and leave a review. And let me know topics that you would like to learn about in the future. Until next time, keep on learning. This is a Gwynn Sound podcast.