My Drumsets, Part 1: E.W.Kent and WFL Zephyr (1965 – 1968)

In spite of having been so rapturously in love with drums since the age of eight, compared with many drummers who have reached my (much more advanced) current age I've actually owned relatively little drum equipment throughout my life. This post is Part 1 in a multi-part rundown of it all.

First drumset (1965): E.W.Kent (black-diamond pearl wrap)

Configuration: Bass drum, tom-tom, snare drum

• 20” x 14” bass drum, 12” x 8” small tom, 14” x 5½” snare drum

• Various entry-level hardware

• 15” Paiste Standard crash cymbal, 13” Italian (no brand name) crash cymbal, 14” Zyn hi-hat cymbals

After taking lessons for a year and practicing a couple of hours every day on my Pearl MIJ snare drum and humidor-lid cymbal (see Starting To Play), when I was 13 I used my bar-mitzvah gift money ($150!) to purchase my first drumset used from my friend Terry, who had switched from playing drums to playing vibes. It included entry-level (read: cheap) hardware and an old fibre trap case that doubled as a drum stool for Terry. I guess Terry wasn’t as concerned with his drumming comfort as I was, because almost immediately I got myself an entry-level (read: cheap) drum stool that had some padding for my bony 13-year old butt. (The catalog listing for the kit I bought from Terry appears at the top of this article. Terry's kit also included hi-hat cymbals on a hi-hat stand and an extra crash cymbal and stand.) 

Although E.W.Kent were American-made drums and were an improvement over the MIJ imports of the day, they featured very thin 2-ply maple shells and were designed for the beginning player, so they weren’t that much of an improvement. In particular, the E.W.Kent snare drum's sound had lots of ringing in it that stubbornly remained even though I tried new drumheads and different tunings, and it had a snare mechanism that was flimsy and frequently slipped out of adjustment. The couple of times I substituted my Pearl snare drum for it I thought the Pearl sounded better (less out-of-control ringing), but my drumming ego would not countenance my using a red sparkle snare drum with my new black-diamond pearl drumset. (Although at times I would tune the Pearl as low as it would go and try to use it as a floor tom, since the Kent drumset lacked a floor tom when I bought it.)

The cymbals were also not quite professional-quality instruments. The Zyn hi-hat cymbals sounded particularly nasty, spitting out clangy gong-like overtones whenever I tried to play them without holding them together with the foot pedal. The Paiste Standard and Italian crash cymbals weren’t too bad though, and I kept on using them even as I began adding top-of-the-line Zildjian cymbals to my setup a little later on. In fact, I used them all the way until I got brand-new drums in 1973.

But none of that mattered to me at first — I had a REAL-LIVE DRUMSET sitting an arms-length away from my bed, beckoning me with temptation 24/7/365. I continued with my weekly drum lessons and began a three-hour daily practice regimen (one hour on snare drum, plus two more on the entire drumset), which I kept up for the next six years until I moved into a house with my bandmates while in college.

Second drumset (1966): WFL (Ludwig) Zephyr (black & gold duco painted finish)

Configuration: Bass drum, floor tom, snare drum

• 26” x 14” bass drum, 16” x 16” floor tom, 14” x 7” snare drum

• Various 1940s-era entry-level hardware and a Ludwig Universal Speedmaster pedal

• 1 nickel/silver 10” cymbal

Ever since I could remember, Pop would go to U.S. government surplus auctions, looking for things that he or his buddies could quickly fix and flip for a profit. (Pop was a certified piston-engine aircraft mechanic and knew his way inside, outside, around and through all manner of 1940s – 1950s era mechanical and electronic devices.) For years and years we would routinely get auction catalogs in the mail describing the items to be sold. I remember once when I was around nine-years old seeing a surplus M4 Sherman tank in one of these catalogs and begging Pop to get it for me. After all, it would have only cost $100/ton! In his soothing Brooklyn accent he gently explained to me (“Whadda ya, NUTS?”) that since an M4 weighed 35 tons, $100/ton still worked out to be $3500, and that the tank would not have been in running order, and that it would have had its 75mm cannon removed before it would have been sold. I was crushed.

But the government auction I remember the most is the one in 1966 that Pop returned from with a 1939 – 1940 vintage WFL (Ludwig) Zephyr drumset in tow, and it included a big prize — a 16” x 16” floor tom. Pop knew how much I needed (OK, wanted) a floor tom to complete my Kent set and my guess is that he had been able to pick up this nearly 30-year old drumset for a song. Of course the Zephyrs didn’t match my black-diamond pearl E.W.Kents — they were all in a black & gold duco (painted) finish. But the important thing was that the E.W.Kents finally became a standard-configuration 4-piece drumset; matching finishes didn’t matter, at least not for a little while.

Above: A black and gold duco WFL Zephyr drumset (from their 1939 catalog),
very similar to the one Pop brought home in 1966. The drumset Pop
bought had a full-sized floor tom (with legs) instead of the smaller

stand-mounted tom-tom shown at the right in the photo.

1966 photo of the author playing the E.W.Kent drumset after I added the floor tom from the WFL Zephyr drumset. I also added the Zephyr's 10" cymbal as a splash (above the small tom), but soon replaced it with an 8" Zildjian Splash. (The posterboard sign with the joke Slingerland logo in front of the bass-drum head didn't last long.)

A couple of other good things came from that Zephyr set. One was that it included a professional-quality Universal Speedmaster bass drum pedal. Admittedly it was 1930s-era mid-level professional quality, but it was smooth, strong and a big improvement over the cheap POS pedal that originally came with the E.W.Kent set and felt like it would fall apart with every stroke. My bass-drum technique started improving right away.

The other good thing about the Zephyr set was that it was fitted with calfskin drumheads. Since natural calf heads are hygroscopic they react to changes in temperature and humidity. This requires that the drummer must frequently tweak their drums’ tuning, sometimes even completely re-tuning their entire drumset. The E.W.Kents were fitted with plastic heads (like just about all drums have been since the invention of the plastic drumhead in 1957), which maintain their tuning regardless of the weather, but since my new floor tom had calf heads I had to learn the ins and outs of drum tuning so I could keep the floor tom’s pitch where I wanted it to be relative to the other drums. That tuning experience has served me well ever since then, enabling me to quickly get and maintain the sound I want out of any drumset with relatively little bother.

I set up the Zephyr’s snare drum, bass drum and cymbal facing the only remaining open wall in my now-crowded bedroom, attached the original pedal from the E.W.Kent set and occasionally brought my drum stool over and played the set. I remember that its snare drum was really nice sounding; it would be another four years before I got one that sounded that good to use with the “Expand-O-Kent” set (see below).

“Expand-O-Kent” drumset (1967 – 1973): Combination of E.W.Kent and Ludwig drums

Added in early 1967:

• E.W.Kent 16” x 16” floor tom (black-diamond pearl wrap)

• 18" A Zildjian Crash-Ride cymbal; 8" A Zildjian Splash cymbal

• Walberg & Auge Buck Rogers snare stand and Perfection hi-hat stand

New drumset configuration: Bass drum, tom-tom, floor tom, snare drum

In 1967 I began expanding my E.W.Kent drumset by adding a brand-new matching black-diamond-pearl Kent floor tom. (I moved the Zephyr floor tom across the room to be with its Zephyr snare and bass drum brothers.) The E.W.Kent floor tom was a good drum that was easy to tune and had solid tone.

Around this time I finally got my first Zildjian cymbals, an 18” crash/ride that I bought at a pawn shop and an 8” splash that I bought brand-new (it cost $10.00). I also purchased a top-of-the-line Buck Rogers snare drum stand (the snare stands included with the E.W.Kent and Zephyr kits were not much sturdier than typical music stands) and a professional-level Perfection hi-hat stand (the same model I saw both Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich using on the cover photo of their 1956 Krupa and Rich LP.)

Now that all my drums matched and I had a full 4-piece "Krupa Standard" configuration (see A Few Words About The Drumset), I was finally ready to take my drums out and play them in public. I soon formed my first real band (Thursday Island — not a bad name!) with my friends Mark Voland on bass and vocals, Dan Rosen on guitar, and Scott Wroot on guitar and vocals. We played covers of early Who songs ("I Can See For Miles" and "My Generation"), The Seeds ("Pushin' Too Hard") and others that have been erased from my memory by the following 50+ years. Our one original composition was called "The Big Tomato" (of course that was the one that featured my drum solo).

The author (at 15-years old) playing the first expansion of his original

E.W.Kent drumset in the band Thursday Island. Note the heavy-duty

Walberg Buck Rogers snare stand and Perfection hi-hat. The guitarist 

in the background is Dan Rosen, at whose brother's bar-mitzvah party

we were playing.

I'm not sure where I came up with the money for all this stuff. I was still a year away from working my first job and my bar-mitzvah gift money was no doubt all gone by 1967. I think some of it may have been deferred from birthday and holiday gifts, but Pop and Mom were always amazingly generous when it came to helping me in my quest to become A Drummer.

Mom & Pop at my elementary-school graduation, 

around the time when I got my first snare drum.

-Hyam R. Sosnow