I've got a late 60s wmp Rogers holiday- the kick drum is a Dayton and all the toms are Fullerton. I've heard some opinions regarding the Fullertons as inferior to the pre-CA drums but I have a better kit than most people my age.

From what I've heard the hardware was stronger on the Cleveland/Dayton drums but the Fullertons are still just as good as far as I'm concerned.

The earliest Dayton drums have flat grey interiors and are identical to the Clevelands. After a while the Dayton lugs got lighter but most of the rest stayed the same, except for the mounting screws/washers etc, and then the speckled paint came in. Shells are the same, Remember, these are still Ohio-built drums, with the same staff and the same plant in Covington. The sound is fundamentally the same.

After the move to Fullerton, the lugs etc got lighter and the cast collet noses (prone to cracking) began, and in the early 70's the lug springs went away and the last, lightest, lug design was set. The tom leg mounts became cast at this time as well. The sound of the Fullerton drums is hard to distinguish from the Ohio stuff, in my opinion. All of these drums sound great, but in '76 when the BigR/Memriloc generation started the heavier hardware muted the drums somewhat, in my view, and rendered the occasional tom pretty dead sounding. Cutting the tom arm tube a little shorter would usually remedy this to an extent.

The Cleveland stuff is highly prized for it's heft and excellent sound, and because it is 'pre-CBS' - which is as much an emotional distinction as anything else. But the rest of the drums thru the mid-70's all sound very close, in my opinion, and all sound excellent. Maybe the first Cleveland beavertails, with their 3-ply shells instead of the 5-plies they evolved into after a couple of years, sound a little sweeter - but that is up to an individual kit and an individual set of ears to decide.

There is a little bit of emotion and sentiment and perception involved in all of this, there are no hard and fast rules in my opinion.

I'm new to Rogers, recently purchased a set of Fullerton Power Tones, same sizes as a kit which belongs to a friend of mine. His are Cleveland era. We use the same heads and have both played each kit and compared and can't find a notable difference in sound.

I have Cleveland and Dayton flat grey, as well as Dayton speckled. I don't have any Fullerton at the moment, but the early ones would be very close to the Dayton speckled in construction. I prefer the Dayton speckled because they were produced in the era of my first awareness of and interest in Rogers drums.

I also think you see a bit less reinforcing ring separation in the Dayton speckled drums because that sealer was more effective than the flat grey paint. But mostly it seems to be a matter of who built your set on the day it was constructed.

The lugs do get lighter in the later Fullerton years and there is the issue of the cast collets that do split. The leg mounts are good in that era insofar as there are no splines to loosen up, but they are a little less convenient to use because the leg no longer can be spun around because the trench is grooved to fit the hex shape of the leg. So a little slower on set up, but perhaps more stable.

All in all, they are all good in my view once they have beavertail lugs and before they cross over to the Memri-loc hardware. Quality varies more by kit than by era in my experience.

Hallo everybody, I'm asking two questions here: how is it possible to distinguish between the 3-ply Cleveland mahogany-poplar-mahogany from 3-ply Cleveland maple-poplar-maple

AND

are all Dayton 5 ply? maple-poplar-maple-poplar-maple ?

Did Rogers make any model with All Maple shells ?

I think the only all maple shells Rogers Made were the XP-8's of the mid- to late 70s.

My Kinks answer is: You Really Got Me.

It's the first I'm aware of a mahogany-poplar-mahogany shell. Very interesting. I would expect the mahogany shell to project a slightly warmer sound, but if the bearing edges are different one from the other, that will probably control the sound more than the makeup of the plies.

Early edges on Rogers drums were essentially flat before the landed on the final edge that most of them had throughout the beavertail era.

If you can see the plies on the edges, mahogany will be a darker color of wood than poplar or maple.

I have never heard of or seen a Rogers shell in mahog/poplar/mahog. Rogers used mahogany as an outer veneer on drums that were to be painted, but the shell itself was the same. There are also a lot of Rogers drums that were made with the mahogany veneer that were not painted: parade drums, some student drums, etc.

The early Keller shells were 3-ply, and probably had a poplar middle ply. The shells evolved to 5 plies by the late 60's, and probably still had poplar as a filler ply, but other woods may have been substitued from time to time depending on availability.

The XP8 were touted as being all maple....