Cooper’s Vintage Drums

www.coopersvintagedrums.com

1969-71 Yamaha Red Ripple Pearl Drum Set

Model YD-205P

$1095

Here is a really cool vintage Yamaha set finished in original Red Ripple Pearl….

Yamaha began producing drums around 1966, which were fairly standard, lower priced, imported instruments. However around 1969, Yamaha took a different direction in drum construction, incorporating high quality Birch wood, quality chrome hardware, and beautiful and unique pearl finishes. These drums were very similar to Gretsch drums of the 1960’s and 70’s, even imitating their internal muffler design and painted interiors. Yamaha drums were the first high quality, professional-level drums to be produced in Japan. This is a very high quality drum set that is light years ahead of all other Japanese drums from this era. They sound as good as they look!

The condition of this drum is very good to excellent. There are several scrapes and scratches but the pattern of the pearl finish makes it hard to notice them. Photos of the scratches are available. The floor tom has a long but extremely thin scratch that runs along one side. See photo below.

This Yamaha drum set has the somewhat unusual black interiors. Most Yamaha sets at that time had gray painted interiors. The black paint is definitely original. All drums have nice, true bearing edges. The original and hard to find bass pedal is included!

The snare drum has two strainers- one on each side, similar to Gretsch snare drums.

The tom mount has one non-original arm. It could easily be cut down to match the other but it does add extra versatility, especially if the set was used as a four piece. The Yamaha mounts were quite unique and had several moving parts. Of course, the toms could always be RIMS mounted for improved resonance. There are endless options for tom mounting. One could even change the system to a Rogers Swiv-O-Matic with very little alteration.

The tom mount was changed over to a Ludwig mount at one time but the original mount was located and put back in place. Note the bolts where the Ludwig was mounted.

There is a very small “cigarette burn” about the size of a pencil eraser on the bass drum. It was colored with matching red and is not very noticeable.