This model was the flagship wood snare for the Slingerland Drum Company during the 1960's and 70's. It has a solid maple shell and comes with a zoomatic strainer, which misplaced the old clam shell strainer from earlier times. The drum also has brass stick saver hoops as standard.

When Buddy Rich became a Slingerland endorser in the 60's, this drum was referred to as the Buddy Rich Artist model. The drum is wrapped in the very beautiful Blue Agate Pearl finish. This finish was quite popular and a number of kits and snare drums were sold in this wrap.

The Radio King snare drum has been a staple of the Slingerland company for years. This particular model has a solid brass shell with brass hoops to boot. The model was advertised as “the drum with the solid brass hoop with no sound distorting center bead.”

This was a not so subtle dig at the competition, which was the Ludwig Super 400 which did have a center bead through the shell. Unfortunately for Slingerland, the Ludwig 400 reached a higher level of popularity and this model has languished on the vintage market.

The famous "Radio King" snare drum has been prized by collectors since it's inception. The great Gene Krupa played Radio King as did Buddy Rich, Dave Tough and my instructor, Max Mariash.

The drum featured here is a one-piece maple shell with the Radio King Strainer.

The solid steam bent maple shell of this drum was the state of the art in drum manufacturing at the time. Unfortunately, the lever on the famous "Clamshell Strainer" was not very sturdy and cracked under stress.

Nevertheless, this is a marvelous sounding drum and an excellent example of the golden age of the American Drum Company.

This particular model was offered, as far as I can tell, for only one year - 1979. It's unique feature of having 12 lugs for the top head and 6 for the bottom was not a success.

There was a Buddy Rich model, but only in the 4 x 14 size. It also had the TDR strainer rather than the more common zoomatic strainer.

This drum has a solid maple shell and comes with the famous super strainer, also known as the "Clamshell strainer". The extension levers on these snare strainers tended to crack very easily.

This drum has the brass oval badge that was on all Slingerland drums from 1928 until the early 1940's. It also has the famous Radio King strainer.

This drum was available with a choice of chrome or nickel plating and it came in two sizes, 7 x 14 or 8 x 14. The one piece steam bent shell was the gold standard for the wood shell of the time.