I received this set late last year and wrote an article about it in a previous issue . The “before” picture is the first one in the slide show above. I disassembled, cleaned and refurbished this four piece drum kit made by Star/Tama in Japan - sizes are 12/14/20/14 .It’s one of the rarer MIJ sixties stencils - LIDO SUPREME - and one of the rarest and zowiest colors - fantasia pearl. This set was in decent condition when I got it except for the toms missing bottom heads, hoops and tension rods. I took all the metal parts off and soaked them in a tub of organic rust remover for 24 hours - Workshop Hero Metal Rescue Rust Remover Bath . This stuff is MAGIC! No scrubbing - just wash it off. (No steel wool - that’s a big no-no in my work shop; Steel wool leaves micro scratches in the chrome that leads to pitting). The cheap Japanese chrome had a good bit of pitting but it came out and nice shiny, except for the hoops. I painted the inside of the metal bass drum hoops with Rustoleum Chrome Spray Paint. They were very rusted on the inside channel. This is the first time I’ve ever used chrome spray and it came out better than I thought it would. I can hardly tell the difference between the actual chrome and the painted chrome. Can you? Of course it’s not high quality German chrome to begin with.
I cleaned the plastic wrap with RCI Acrylic Drums Cleaning and Polishing Spray - once to clean the smutz off and again to polish to a shine with a micro fiber cloth. I had to do a little bit of sanding to get the edges smooth again but they weren’t in terrible shape. The snare bed is very wide and deep enough to get a buzz free snare response. Most MIJ snares I’ve seen have a very narrow bed. This one is very gradual. Someone did their homework over in Japan back then. They were copying mostly American drums.
I packed all the lugs with cotton pads to keep the springs from rattling and ringing (shown). The tension rods are typical Japanese thread so I had a bit of a hunt through my bin of Japanese lug nuts and tension rods to find some that worked on the bottom tom lugs.
I installed Evans UV1 heads on top and Evans clear G1 on bottom of the toms and snare. If you haven’t used these UV1 heads yet, you should give them a try; so easy to tune. The tone of these drums surprised me. Even though they are cheap luan drums from the sixties, they seem to be well designed and made, more so than most of the MIJ drum from that period that I’ve dealt with.
The old clip style tom mount was robbing the mounted tom of its low end, so I installed a RIMS suspension mount on the 12” tom using the clip bracket that came on the drum. I was surprised that I could get the bracket to fit on the RIMS mount, but three of the holes lined up. I’ll have to drill into the RIMS mount for the fourth hole.
I’ve used the 20” bass drum on several cocktail gigs. It has a nice low tone and a good “thump”. Soon I’m taking the whole kit to play a gig in the near future. I have a feeling that this is going to be my “go to” kit for lighter gigs. If they pass the test I am probably going to install modern spurs on the bass and Slingerland type hoops on the toms and snares which will further tighten up the tone. The shell mount cymbal arm seems to stay put so I’ll probably use that as well. Old School.
I’ve had the Lido Supreme dealer banner for years.
I also included a couple of pictures of some other Lido sets I’ve found online. There’s even a double bass fantasia pearl kit. Most of the Lido Supremes had Slingerland copy lugs, throw offs, and even cymbal stands, but they also made kits with Sonor copy lugs. I think the Script Badge is pretty cool too. Notice how it has the same slant up to the right like the Rogers’ script badges.