Shells Only

[oldbatterhead]

Just curious and posting this for a friend of mine. In his parents storage locker he came across a set of Pearl Drum Shells that he believe once belonged to his dad that were bought in the 90's. He believes that his dad bought these used, sometime in the late 80's or early 90's with the intention of refinishing them (his dad has passed away, his mom has zero knowledge of the drums). They are the shells only...no hardware at all. No mounts, no Lugs, no bass drums spurs, one bass drum is missing a hoop. The shells, I have been told appear to be in pretty good shape and the one shell, a 10" shell has the Pearl badge on it that says "Pearl Professional DLX". Now I have not seen the shells in person and I am waiting on some photos. Personally I own a large set of DLX drums which perhaps I can integrate these shells into my kit. He described the colour as a deep burgundy and I am thinking that is likely wine red, which luckily I have. his curiosity as well as mine is what do you guys think a set of 80's vintage Pearl DLX shells with no hardware at all would be worth? Just the shells.

He said there are two 22" bass drums, 16" floor tom, 10, 12 13 14 15 rack toms and two single headed toms as there are only lug holes on one end of the drum and he thinks they are 8" and 10"

[3pearlkits]

Hey OBH,
Bit of a tough one.
The two single headed toms are not DX/DLX. At worst, one 10" tom is DLX. The rest may not be, though that's not likely the case, given the sizes seem to work in with DLX sizes, as well as a double kick kinda large configuration.

Really, you need to inspect the shells, simply to see if the plies are consistent across all the double head shells to see if they are consistent with the 10" DLX.

Next up, finding enough original coffin lugs, as modern replacements are totally awful. Hoops for the toms, well, you could get generic 2.3mm hoops, even superhoop II.

Given that there is a pretty large expense getting the kit back to a player, as shells only, it's not worth a lot.
Of course, the issue then is not ripping off a mate.

Have you done a bit of completed listing ebay searching to get an idea of DLX kit worth (especially in Canada)?
If you could average a few sold pricing kits, and reduce it at least 30%, maybe even 50%, might let you end up with a figure.

Flip side, has old mate got an asking price?

[Andy H]

I had a couple DLX drums (22" bass and 13" tom). They sounded VERY deep. If you can get them cheap enough, they may be worth restoring.

[oldbatterhead]

3PK, my buddy has very little knowledge of the drums. His dad used to run an auto shop and took all sorts of things in on trade for labour and parts. I think perhaps this may have been one of those deals, but I don't know for sure. He thinks his dad may have purchased them used with the intention to fix them up. My buddy has been busy cleaning out one of his dads old storage lockers and found these. I have not yet seen the shells but my buddy says they all match and they all appear to be the same colour. He said it appears as though there were badges on them at one point in time and he described the locations of the badges and they sound like where Pearl would situate the badges on the drums. The only shell I am interested in is the 15" tom as I could convert it into a floor tom. I am hoping he comes across all the hardware in a box somewhere but who knows. The DLX drums I have now I truly love they sound so good. I am using Remo pinstripes on the batter side and Remo Ambassadors on the resonant side and I use a tune bot to tune them for max resonance...they truly sing. My only wish is that they did not have the BT3 tom mounts and used some sort of suspension mount instead of drilling that huge hole through the shell with that massive tom arm sticking into the drum...but that was Pearl then!

I have tried to find DLX kits for sale on eBay or my local used classifieds but there are no listings to be had so price comparisons are tough to do. even the coffin lugs are hard to find!

[3pearlkits]

OBH,
I had a bit of a scout too for completed listings.
So maybe completed listings for other Pearl Pro series 80's kits might give you a bit of an idea...