Beverley Super De Luxe (New Standard) snare, circa 1964

In early 2017 I snapped up a Sonor Vintage Series with Red Ripple Delmar wrap. A few months later a similarly wrapped Beverley snare popped up on eBay UK that seemed to be begging to be united with my Sonor kit. 

The snare looked a bit rough, but the seller claimed that the wrap was intact and that the drum seemed to have no major issues. Fortunately the seller was totally correct. The drum arrived quite dirty, but everything was in working order. Within an afternoon I had it cleaned and polished. 

Before and After - Same light conditions

I was particularly impressed by the ultra-smooth birch shell, with the usual Premier-style beech rings. Also worth noting is the extra deep snare bed. I'm not enough of an expert to tell you the measurements, so I posted a shot below. Most of the little "star" washers broke apart when I removed the lugs. Not the end of the world.

Lovely birch shell with deep snare bed (top-right), before clean-up

Fortunately the snare matches the much newer Sonor kit almost exactly. The Sonor's Delmar Red Ripple wrap has a bit of a brighter overall tone, but the Beverley wrap has held up incredibly well and has plenty of shine. 

Sonor Vintage Series with Beverley Super De Luxe Snare

Click for higher resolution - Notice some chrome pitting

Foe even more photos, you can visit my gallery on OneDrive.

As you can see in this 1964 catalog, this model is indeed "Super De Luxe" despite the badge that says "New Standard."

1964 Beverley catalog

Regarding the name of the wrap, at first I thought it was Oyster Wine, but Joe Cox pointed out my mistake. Now I'm thinking it is Sunset Pearl. Drop me a note or leave a comment if you know the definitive answer!

Sunset Pearl listed in a 1964 catalog (BE = British Edition?)

And the sound? Superb. Fat and woody at medium/low tuning. The snare has high rims, so I have to focus on hitting the center lest I hit too many rim shots. Also, the high triple-flange rims don't work with a Sonor slotted key. I have to tune it with a screw driver.

A little video...

Beverley Script Badge Drums

Every so often we buy what looks like a hunk of junk and try to turn it into a playable kit -- or even a nice kit. A few months ago (autumn 2015) I bought a Frankenstein kit consisting of two "script badge" era Beverley drums (pre-international birch with earlier lugs, 12x8, 16x16) and one later Blue Badge era (mahogany, later lugs, 20x14).

SPOILER ALERT: If you want to see the end result now, scroll to the bottom and then come back up here. Main idea: These old Beverley pre-international drums are fantastic.

Also, before I get started, I want to correct some misinformation that's out there on the net: Beverley made Pre-International sizes. Don't let anyone tell you they didn't. They did.

So back to FRANKENSTEIN, as I call him/her/it/them. Here's what the drums looked like...

Notice the following major detractors:

• Horrible sticky-foil "wrap"
• Later B&H era Beverley badges
• Extra holes in kick (typical of Premier and Beverley that originally had disappearing spurs, particularly when on a mahogany shell)

But also a few items that gave me hope:

• Lugs seemed to be in nice shape
• Chrome generally looking tolerable
• Original slotted rods and kick rods
• No extra holes in toms 
• Original "tall boy" hoops in decent condition

When I took possession, I quickly peeled back the horrible foil "wrap" to find shells in OK condition, but covered -- COVERED -- in nasty glue.

To make a very long story short, this crap did NOT want to come off easily. I had to use gel-type paint remover to get it off, but the shells remained stained.

The birch drums fared a bit better:

But the mahogany had quite a bit of glue stuck in its deeper grain:

Some outer ply came off on the floor tom. Notice the dark middle ply. MAHOGANY. Pretty obvious that this is a birch-mahogany-birch drum. That made me pretty happy. I ended up filling the "holes" pretty easily with wood paste. I've read that wood paste can crack on drums. Hopefully it will hold up. I'll report back if it doesn't.

Once I finally got the drums cleaned and sanded, I had to decide how to finish them. Since the drums are mixed (birch toms, mahogany kick) I couldn't really oil them (no natural finish). The most obvious thing to do would have been re-wrap. But as you probably know, decent wrap is expensive. I promised myself not to spend too much on this job, so I ruled out wrap.

Instead I opted to use natural SHELLAC mixed with BRONZE POWDER. You see, I had some materials leftover from my recent clean-up of my Golden Sun Premier B303, so I thought I would use them on Frankenstein.

The process is pretty simple: You simply dissolve the bronze powder in the shellac and start brushing it on. You have to make sure the powder is evenly dissolved, and you have to use a quality brush: The finish is only as good as your brush.

This is an intermediate stage. Notice it's still pretty ugly.

I applied many layers - probably about six. I did not sand between layers since I found that too much material came off during sanding, even with 600 grain.

The final stage was to spray with Talens Acrylic Varnish (Glossy 114). This gave the drums a touch of shine and smoothed over a few of the imperfections. Overall I ended up with a pleasant finish. We'll see how it holds up. The other day a bandmate hit the kick with a mic stand and the drum came out unscathed. So far so good.

Here are some shots iof the finished kit. Pardon the mismatched kick hoops. I used what I had around.

And here's an original badge as well as some that I printed with a 3D printer. They look alright, but aren't quite up to my standards. The main problem is finding a way to fix them to the drum. I need to make some time to visit a screw and nail shop. I'm sure there's a solution.

New Beverley player discovered - Daisy Palmer

Just found another vintage Beverley player on the scene.
One Miss Daisy Palmer from Eyes on Film and more.

Blue Badge Beverley Drums, Vintage (early 1970s)

After playing my buddy's Rogers Holiday, I became determined to score a vintage kit of my own. After drooling over kits on American eBay for weeks and fretting over the risks and costs of shipping overseas, I decided it would be easier to find a kit locally, here in Europe where I'm living (Hungary, to be precise).

Pretty quickly I made the move on a rather obscure kit out of England called Beverley. Or as it is written on the blue badge: BeVeRLeY OF ENGLAND.

Before making a move I read dozens of posts about Beverley drums on various sites to convince myself that "Blue Badge Beverley" kits from the late 60's are professional kits. I read great comments about the supraphonic-like aluminum Beverley 21 (or Cosmic 21) snare, one of which was included in the local offering.

Here's the kit in a nice little track from my current band. It features the main kit without the 13, but with the Cosmic 21 snare. The 12" had a Renaissance Remo head, while the 16" a coated Ambassador.

So here's the word on my Blue Badge Beverley, after a couple of weeks in my possession. It was sold to me as a 1968 kit, though I have no way to prove that. UPDATE: This kit seems to be at least a 1974 kit. The oval-shaped "lokfast" tom mount seems to have only been introduced in the 70's:

These lasted until roughly 1974 when they were replaced by the more substantial ones (confusingly called Lokfast), which we’re probably all familiar with. These had an oval down-tube, knurled L-arms, and a massive cast receiver block on the bass. 

source: http://www.drummagazine.com/gear/print/the-rocky-history-of-premier-drums


Set-up and sizes
12 x 8, 13 x 9, 16 x 15 (yes, 16 x 15!), 22 x 14, with a 5 x 14 Cosmic 21 snare
The 13 actually has a stamp on the inside that says International Size. I consider that pretty cool!

Shells 

The drums are Premier 3-ply birch with beech re-rings. All, that is, except for the 12", which is a Premier mahogany shell with beech re-rings. Clearly they are matching drums, wrapped at the same time. Don't ask me how or why the 12 is mahogany, though it makes sense according to my research. That is, Premier started to move to mahogany around this time, so I guess somehow this kit got made with a mahogany 12". Go figure. Anyway, all of the shells are perfectly round with no signs of any problems whatsoever with the bearing edges.  The Cosmic 21 snare is aluminum (or aluminium, if you prefer).

Interestingly, the floor tom seems to have a sandwich layer of darker wood, presumably mahogany. I've yet to find info about Premier using a sandwich shell of birch-mahogany-birch, but you can clearly see a dark ply in this photo.

Update: Here's a link to a site that mentions a middle-ply of "darker wood" on Olympic (Premier) shells: http://www.vintageolympic.co.uk/faq.html#q2


Wrap 
The wrap itself might officially be known as Hairline Silver, but I'm not sure.

Update: A fellow VintageDrumForum user informs me that the name of this wrap is Silver Star.

Whatever it's called, it's certainly silver and textured and very cool (clearly a subjective view, though). I had read on one forum that Beverley kits had thin wrap. This is certainly what I would call a light wrap, or maybe soft is a better word. It's not a hard plastic wrap, but almost more of a fabric-like wrap. Instead of cracking, this wrap scratches like a thick industrial wallpaper, you might say. The wrap is a bit bubbled in a few places, mainly on the 12". But you have to look closely to notice.


Badges, Serial Numbers
My band mate noticed that at a certain angle you can see a serial number printed on the each blue badge. I'll have to write them down and post them here.


Chrome.

Probably the most surprising thing about the Beverley is the chrome. Even close-up there's hardly a spot on the chrome. On some sites I read that Beverley was first known for music stands, so I guess it makes sense that the chrome is top-notch. Even the Cosmic 21 is almost flawless, but I've seen some 21's in rough shape online.

Hoops/Rims
So far this is the weak spot. The hoops are rather light, and the 12" hoops are out-of-round where the drum seems to have been dropped. The 13" is also slightly dented. I think I read somewhere that these are 2.3mm hoops, but they are not as solid as the steel rims on my new Natal, for example.  I replaced the 12" with standard Gibraltar 2.3mm hoops and it's sounding fine. Update: I also changed the 13 and 16 just to keep everything the same. Naturally I've stored away the originals.

Lugs
Somewhere on a forum someone described Beverley lugs as "space age", and I'd have to say that's fair. We're talking Sputnik 1957 space age. The one practical problem I discovered with the otherwise stylish and well-chromed lugs is that they are positioned close to the hoop and have an upward pointing "tail" that makes it hard to finger-tighten the rods. In other words, my fingers don't fit in the space between the lug and the hoop. And it's not like I have fat fingers.

Tension rods
It seems Beverley drums always came with slotted-tension rods, and mine is no exception. The original rods are in excellent shape. I got a Sonor key, so I can manage alright.  Some guys suggest that the Sonor key is not ideal on English slotted rods, and I'd have to say I agree. The Sonor key works, but it's not a perfect fit.

Strainer on the 21
The strainer is a bit flawed. You have to pull the knob up a bit before pulling the lever, and sometimes it slips off during play. Not good. I need to spend some time debugging it, you might say. UPDATE: A little teflon lubricant fixed the strainer! Easy as that.

Tom mount
Originally I had trouble figuring out how to position two rack toms mounted on the kick, but with some suffering and experimentation I managed to figure out how to get the best out of the rather old fashioned hardware. I guess this is why Keith Moon preferred  Rogers Swiv-O-Matic to any of the mounting available out of the the UK at the time?

Sound... 
Fantastic! Watch the video and listen to "Raven Girl" and decide for yourself (see above).

Beverley in the USA
My research tells me that these kits were sold in the late 70's in the US as Premier Powerhouse 6500 and Premier Kicker 6400. Same as the Beverley kits from the same period, as far as I can tell, with some variation over time (kick spurs, for example).

• Premier Powerhouse 1975 from Vintage Drum Guide 
• Premier Kicker 1977 from Vintage Drum Guide 
• After the demise of the Beverley name, it seems the kits became marketed as Premier Projector (catalog ZIP from drumarchive.com)
• Projectors have Beverley kick-drum sized lugs on all drums, including toms (the lugs have one type of insert for kick and one for toms in order to allow proper spacing between rim/hoop and rod)
• The later Soundwave is not the same as Beverley

Playlist on YouTube
I started a playlist of videos featuring vintage Beverley drums.
Feel free to add to it!




Here's some random banging showing the toms with wide open medium tuning and the Cosmic tuned somewhat lower than I play it now (not intended as a solo).