Vistalite Collections - Andy Youell

I've been hitting things for as long as I can remember and, having demolished my Mum's knitting needles and best cake boxes, my eleventh birthday saw the arrival of my first drum kit - a late 60's Premier Olympic kit. As a kid in the 1970s, I was always fascinated by the drummers on TV playing those crazy "see-through" drum kits. The UK pop show "Top of the Pops" house kit was a clear Pearl acrylic and every week I'd see drummers pounding those crazy tubs. I was hooked.

Years passed - I bought a Trak kit in 1985 and by 1990 I was playing a shiny new Premier 8-piece in a gorgeous rosewood finish....plastic drums were the wrong side of fashionable but I was still fascinated.

In 1992 I found my first Vistalite in a music shop in Bristol. I bought a 22 inch bass drum, 13, 14 & 15 rack toms, a 16 inch floor tom and a "home-made" clear snare, built from 2 sections of acrylic, bent and glued to form an 8 inch shell. It had Premier lugs on top, Slingerland below, a Premier snare strainer and a Sonor damper. The kit was messy, scratched, had a nasty crack from the spur mount on the bass drum, but I was over the moon.

The kit caused a stir immediately and playing gigs in Bristol in the early 90's the clear kit became my trademark. I stopped playing for a couple of years in 1995 whilst I studied for my MBA. In 1997 I found myself living in Cheltenham and desperate to get back to the drums.

The internet put me in contact with drummers and dealers all over the world and the interest in Vistalites was really starting to take off again. I soon bought 12 and 18 inch toms and a second bass drum - I quickly learnt that the real market for Vistalites was in the US. I picked up a couple of octabans from a dealer in Cambridge, England and, having accumulated an eleven piece drum kit that wouldn't fit in my car, decided that it was time to move on...

In 1998 I saw an advert in Rhythm magazine for a Vistalite kit in Swindon. I phoned the guy to see what he was selling and he said that the ad was all wrong - the kit was a "Wooding" acrylic kit, not a Vistalite. Swindon is a town in England less than an hours drive from Cheltenham so I got in the car and headed out there to see what it was all about.

One hour later, I was driving home with my new Wooding drum kit in the back of the car. I had never seen a kit like this and, to this day, have never seen or heard of another.

I sold the kit in 1999 and now regret it - it was superb - it looked incredible under stage lights - and has got to be one of the rarest acrylic drum kits out there - well - have you ever seen one of these?

The drums were made of a clear acrylic material, heated and shaped to form a cylinder - glued at the seam - just like a Ludwig. What made these drums unusual (unique?) was the rippled pattern of the acrylic material. It felt like a randomly cut-glass to the touch - almost like a very rough bark.

I purchased the Tequila Sunrise kit from Len at classicdrums.com in 2000. The kit has a 24 inch bass drum, 13 & 14 rack toms and 16 & 18 floor toms. It had ALL of the original heads on and was in absolutely superb condition. I managed to pick up a matching snare from a chap in New York later that year.

In 2002 I bought a 15 inch tequila concert tom. Len fixed me up with 16 large lugs, a new badge and a couple of rims and I set to work with the drill.

OK - so this might be the ultimate sacrilege for a Vistalite - but the drilling was a success. Thanks in no small part to the excellent advice on the Jim Rethwish web site, the conversion was a complete success.

I was even able to get an original 3-hole Vistalite damper mounted on the drum and I now have a matching 15 inch rack tom. The only remaining sign of the conversion is the row of un-used holes underneath the top lugs (the result of fitting larger lugs where the small classic type used to be). In August 2002, I picked up a late 12 inch tequila tom on eBay to complete the rack. The rack toms are mounted using RIMS-style mounts and I avoid mounting anything on the bass drum. The RIMS system spreads the weight of the drum across the entire shell and allows the drums to resonate beautifully.

I 2001 I drove to Scotland to meet Allan Fisher and see his incredible collection of Vistalites. I drove home with the Jellybean kit in the back of the car - a very happy man. Jellybean is possibly the rarest of all the Vistalites and this, in the Quadra-Plus configuration is all original, with the exception of the snare which I picked from Colorado Drum in the USA.

For the record, the drums are: 24 inch bass (clear), 13 inch (red), 14 inch (blue), 15 inch (clear), 16 inch (yellow) and 18 inch floor tom (green). The amber snare is 5 inches deep.

This Vistalite marching drum came from Donn Bennett Drum Studio in the USA. It was previously owned by one Leo Palas, Head of North-Eastern Sales for Ludwig in the USA (pictured below, from the 1980 Ludwig catalogue). It came in the original case with the owners name stamped on and is, as far as I can tell, unplayed.

The Premier kit is one of six (we think) kits that were made by the UK company in 1973 and sold off without going into full production. See all the pictures and details on the Premier page.

The kit has the full set of Lokfast hardware, original cases, "Zyn" cymbals and five of the original drum heads.

The Asba kit has got to be one of the most interesting kits I've ever come across. What might appear as a fairly ordinary (brown!) kit has got many unusual design features. See all the Gallic-weirdness on the Asba page.

For the record, the drums are: 22 inch bass, 13 inch tom, 16 inch floor tom and a 5 inch snare.

The clear acrylic tympani was made by Sonor and is only very slightly pink.

Everyhome should have one, don't you think?