More fun with the Vistalites.

Finally got to play the red Vistas with the band. They sound great, though I'm not sold on the single head mounted toms. I'm also thoroughly disgusted with the modern Ludwig tom holder I bought to replace the original. I couldn't get the toms set up in anyway that made sense to me.

Put in some more work on the ambers today. Had to Dremel the screws off those rusted lugs I showed you a while ago. I was able to save the lugs though, which is nice.

I worked on the bass shell a bit, but I'm really skeptical about how much good I'm going to be able to do with it. Like the toms, it's got it's share of scratches, but it's also got this grimy film like they 13" tom had but worse. Working it with the Novus didn't really produce a dramatic difference.

Still, I guess I'm optimistic enough to have worked on one of the bass drum hoops today. One had an incorrect silver sparkle inlay. The other has the correct gold sparkle inlay, but was really roughly painted over with black paint. I scraped all the black off with a screwdriver, which is not a technique I'd recommend using on a drum. Only reason I did it that way was, it worked and I figure the hoop is going to be mostly covered and no one is going to notice if the inlay is scratched.

I also threw a head on that Acrolite snare. If I haven't mentioned it before, those are amazing little snares. I really didn't even tension the head carefully (and I didn't touch the snare side at all) and it sounds just great. I read a rumor (supposedly from Bill Ludwig Jr.) that the only difference between the Acrolite and the SupraPhonic is two lugs and chrome finish. Don't know how much truth there is to that, but I'd bet most people couldn't tell the two drums apart in a blind listening test.

I turned the old head into spacers for the lugs on the bass drum since the kit was missing about 12 of them. Old heads work great for this, if you don't mind cutting the things out.


Well, that's about it. I need a badge grommet tool and a couple more badges and then I'm ready to put the toms together. I'll probably use those with the red kit if nothing else, even though they don't look nearly as nice as the red toms.

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