The company was formed in 1910 as Ludwig & Ludwig by brothers William F. and Theo Ludwig. The brothers' first product was a bass drum pedal followed by timpani. Production then expanded into other types of drums. Because of the Great Depression, the company had to merge with the C.G. Conn Company in the 1930s. William, who disliked his lack of involvement with the design and manufacture of the instruments, left the company in 1936 to open his own company, the W.F.L. Drum Company in 1937. In 1955, William purchased back the Ludwig division from Conn and renamed the reunited companies the Ludwig Drum Company. In 1966, Ludwig purchased the Musser Marimba Company, which produced mallet percussion.
References
Main page (http://www.ludwig-drums.com/). Ludwig-Musser official website. Retrieved February 9, 2005.
The William F. Ludwig II Collection features a wide variety of materials, including an outstanding collection of drums, drum pedals and other drum accessories, historic photographs, a comprehensive drum patent collection, historic documents from the Ludwigdrum companies, trade literature, and related ephemera.
The middle drum was built by Eli Brown and Son, Bloomfield, Connecticut, in 1841.
According to Ludwig, this drum was acquired from a man whose grandfather used it in the Confederate army.
Ludwig explained, "Most of the time when a new shipment of badges came in from our manufacturer, we still had a few boxes of them left in stock, so we just stacked the new boxes in together with the old ones.
Ludwig replied, "I would say in all likelihood thatÂ’s just what happened." At a production rate of about 11,000 drums per month, it meant that for each month that passed, the serial numbers on the unused badges inside of a stagnant box would fall 11,000 digits behind the progressing sequence of serial numbers.
Ludwig when he happened to mention this to me, "Once in a while we found a misplaced box of badges that was overlooked and sitting around the factory for a couple of years.
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