Sonor Swinger snare drum

It often happens to drummers who play with a band to have the need of a secondary drumset that they can leave in the reharsal room to avoid taking all the stuff back and forth from home every time.
When it happened to me, I bought an old used set with a front bassdrum head saying: "Broadway", that in the end revealed to be an old Sonor Action drumset.
It didn't sound so good, the ply finish was a mess, it had only one tom holder for the 2 tom toms, but for the price paid (80€ all in) it was a bargain.

So, I took the whole thing home, I put apart everything and I gave a serious look at the snare drum.
I was sure it was a Sonor steel drum and an old one.
I tried it and it sounded quite good, with a fat, low pitched sound. A few days later I got more precise information on it.
It was a Sonor Swinger series 14"X5" snare, chrome over steel, with the (in)famous swinger plastic lugs and traditional sonor screws, probably from the early '70s.
It took me some time to restore it, polishing the chrome with fine steelwool, but now it is a good instrument and it looks as new.

I use an Evans coated G1 as batter and the original Remo Sound Master as resonant, keeping the tension low to avoid breaking the plastic lugs.
The drum has an internal muffling device that is quite well constructed even if it's not at the level of the more expensive swinger series snares. The same is for the throw off; a simple lever that goes up and down, nothing less, nothing more. The butt end has a screw movement that allows some adjustment, but in time it's got loose, so it isn't very effective any more.

At this time I use it with my acoustic project, muffling it with a mylar ring and keeping the tuning low. It would be impossible to use it for high volume settings becouse it would loose the tuning if hit too hard.

Despite for it's fragility I like this old drum and I think I am not going to give it away.