I do love the sound of vintage Gretsch toms which are like none other, but their stick chopper hoops bend and their die cast hoops have to be tweaked constantly in order to maintain their tuning. Gretsch brass snares have round bearing edges and sound boxy and flat. Their wood shell snares usually sound like cracker boxes - with an occasional exception now and then. Gretsch vintage throwoffs are terrible and the reason everyone's always searching for replacement parts for them is because they almost all broke from normal usage. Gretsch "42 Strand Snares" ??? - The kiss of death, unless you enjoy buzz, rattle, and over tensioning your throwoff. Their bass drums have no bass frequencies and no resonance. And that's BEFORE turning the knob on the Pratt muffler. Standing on a bass drum head an hour before a show hoping to force it down over an oversized Gretsch shell in order to seat it is not exactly what I call "user friendly". As for appearance, Gretsch drums could be uglier but I don't know how that would be possible.

Help2

The sound, looks, and innovation of vintage Rogers maple shell drums is nothing short of amazing! Their drum kits and snare drums are far superior to most other makes. Give me a full set of pre-68 Rogers with Swivomatic mounts anytime over a Gretsch round badge kit. Jumping2

And as for those garbage can lids (otherwise known as "Old K's" ) ... Toilet

but then ... what do I know? CryBaby

When did Rogers become known as "the cadillac of drums"? I've read this a few times in a few places. Why? Price wise, were they more expensive than any other kits at the time? I wasn't too impressed with the Rogers vintage snare I recently sold. It was good not great. Ludwig for my ears.

The Cadillac ref. was started by either Mr. Grossman or Mr. Strauss after Swivomatic came into play.

Price also but I believe it had more to do with good chroming and the fact they were very innovative on hardware.

You have three 3 ply 18,12,14 kits? GOTTA put up pics of those!

Wet dreams are made of these!

never found this to be true whatsoever

I have owned 14 RB kits ranging from 1949 to 1966

and of all of them there was one 12" tom that would not take to tuning and that was because it was out of round

never a bent stick chopper and every cast hoop held the tuning just about indefinitely

these drums generally stayed in one climate controlled room and I don't recall ever having to retune them once the heads settled in

Only bent SC hoops I have seen were on the snare drums that took c clips.........

You tighten them up like crazy,the hoops bent!

Having owned and played all these, I toss out this analogy for heated debate:

Rogers = Cadillac

Gretsch = Lincoln

Ludwig = Chevy

Slingerland = Ford

Sonar = BMW

WFL = Studebaker

Mike C.

Where would you place Premier then?

I'd say up in the BMW/Jaguar class...at least the 70's stuff.....

Never played Premier, but being British, let's say their Jaguar. Better than Mini Cooper, but not quite Bentley.

So Yamaha and Pearl must be Toyota and Honda.