Brand

Used Slingerland drums

H.H. Slingerland founded his company in Chicago in 1912 to make banjos, and by the late 1920s it was building its own drums. Gene Krupa became its first endorser in the 1930s, and at his urging Slingerland made tom-toms with tunable top and bottom heads. The Radio King name arrived in 1936 and 1937, on a snare with a shell steam-bent from a single piece of maple, and it's still the drum collectors chase hardest. During World War II the Rolling Bomber drums used wooden lugs to save metal. In the 1950s the company moved to Niles, outside Chicago, and its 1960s and 1970s drums carry Niles badges, Zoomatic strainers and, from 1969, Set-O-Matic tom holders. Buddy Rich, Danny Seraphine, Nigel Olsson and Neil Peart all played them. The family sold the company in 1970, it folded in 1986, and Gibson later owned the name. DW bought it in 2019 and now builds Radio Kings in Oxnard, California. For dating, Slingerland's badges changed often enough to narrow most drums to a few years.

6 drums we cover.