I have no answers for you but I'll take a look at my pedal on Friday.

Thank you!

SAZ

Saz

We should be asking YOU these questions! lol.

As I understand it (or perhaps misunderstand it) WFL/Ludwig built these but didn't do the actual casting work in house. That was all farmed out to local companies around Chicago who made these parts to Ludwig's specs. The various numbers and logo's that turn up are from the subcontractors who actually made the parts, such as a die-casting outfit. For example lugs will have different numbers and such cast into them depending on who made them, even though outwardly they look the same. The SK parts may have been made by different companies through the years, and/or the dies do wear out and replacements have to be made and kept track of. So maybe that's the explanation...or I might be smokin' crack ;)

The main thing that changed, of course, was the foot board which in the '50s had WFL in a keystone and which was later changed to the Ludwig script logo. Interestingly, the Ludwig catalogs through at least 1967 still pictured the WFL version, although I don't know what you would have gotten if you ordered one.

Seems like there was something different on some Sk's in contrast to others, where the front of the pedal was different. It possibly affected how far the pedal went up under/on the hoop. Maybe someone knows for sure.

WFL bought the Ludwig name back from Conn in 1955 and changed the name of the company back to Ludwig pretty soon thereafter but the drum line was still called WFL for roughly another 3 years until sometime in 1958 when they started using the Transition badge, Thereafter they still continued to use stocks of WFL tagged parts until they were all gone. In the case of die cast parts they apparently continued to make new castings from the old WFL dies until the dies were worn out (casting dies were expensive to make) and needed to be replaced and only at that time would they change the logo over to "Ludwig". So, for example, they continued to churn out WFL logo'ed snare stands for years after the brand changeover (I think they were still doing so until nearly the 1970's). The Speed King apparently was changed over quite a bit earlier than that, perhaps because it was a higher profile item that they wanted the new brand on, or maybe it was simply a lucky coincidence that the die was in need of replacement sooner.

Ludwig doesn't seem to have wasted anything when it came to parts, tools, etc. That also includes catalog artwork, so the WFL version of the Speed King was still pictured in the catalog after the new version had been adopted along with many other out of date illustrations. I think it was the 1971 catalog where Ludwig finally redid the artwork on (almost) everything. Of course by then they had adopted the newer "block" logo, but again a whole lot of product continued to have the previous script logo cast into it.

Thanx Mike! There's always room for me to learn from all of you!

EVERYONE...Thank you for all the great information. I really do appreciate it.

I'm always trying to find out more about the different segments of my bass drum pedal collection.

I'll keep looking in to see the additions to the thread.

SAZ

You probably already know about the footboard clip that stops the linkage from separating during use.

Do you know about the cast change on the posts ?

Member VM2k showed me why my linkage knuckle was scraping the head, older SK`s had a short tab that extends from the posts and allowed you to put the pedal too close to the head and cause head scraping. Ludwig changed the length of it to prevent that from happening. It also helps you to determine if your footboard assembly belongs to your post assembly and older version from newer.

Look where I have the red marks in the inside corners, that`s the change to the cast in the post assembly. The short one is the older design.