I snagged a 3 piece set of 1960s Ludwig (Combo kit) on Ebay. It’s duco laquer finished, and showing its age. The set is mixed date: the snare is six years younger than the bass drum and rack tom. Because it is mixed date, I’ve made the call to not restore, but to rat-rod the kit. What this means is, instead of keeping everything 1960s Ludwig, I’ll have no problem with mixing component dates, or brand names. Since the set came with its own flat base retro snare stand and tom stand (neither are Ludwig,) The decision to go flat based hardware is already made for me.Sans research, the first purchase made for the kit was a DW 6500UL flat base hi hat. No particular reason except that I found a demo model for sale at Sweetwater, making it the lowest priced brand name retro I could find in their store. The DW is light and has a few nice features.Next purchase had to be cymbal stands.After getting off my ass and doing some online research on retro style hardware, I decided the Gibralter 8710 flat base would be my weapon of choice. Considering price vs features, on paper, Gibralter wins out over the higher priced Ludwig, Pearl, DW, and Tama.Now, I’ll just say, if you’re going for a total restoration look, Tama classics are the way to go. They are dead ringers for the old Ludwigs, and a minimum $20 bucks cheaper than what the used original classics go for on ebay. The only problem I have with Tama is pricing. Of the seven brands I looked at on Amazon, priced from highest to lowest, Tama comes in at number 5. If Tama was priced around seven to ten dollars less, I would’ve gone with them for looks sake, but the reason we used to buy the Ludwig classics back in the 1970s was because of the price. We couldn’t afford the high dollar professional stuff, so we made do with the Classic line of hardware. The old classics worked just fine, but they looked frail, and tended to shake a little when supporting twenty inch or bigger heavy weight rides. So bang for buck, Tama falls a little short. Gibralter is number 6, second lowest in price.ChromaCast is the lowest priced of the bunch,and I probably would’ve gone with them; they look like they’ll perform very well, but Gibralter looks sturdier, and offers a few more desirable features.After finally getting my hands on the Gibralter, I can with all honesty, claim they are well worth the Amazon price of $57 bucks.The mentioned desirable features include:* Gearless tilter for fine tuning one’s cymbal angle.* Long leg base. No worry of any stand toppling.* Adjustable base: goes from flat to damn near any angle tripod needed for placement and stability. Consider that Ludwig approaches the positioning problem by using removable plastic feet, and Pearl uses a removable - reversible base. I have not had my hands on either the Ludwig or the Pearl so I’m just going on image observation, but I’d guess that plastic wears out, and reversing the base takes a little more time going from breakdown to set up.* Double lock base and tilter. (Kind of like having a belt and suspenders holding up your pants)* Light weight, but wide tubing (nothing frail about this bad boy)* Nylon (?) bushings (no metal to metal contact on your tube height adjustment, thus sparing you chrome damage.)* Wide wing thumb screws. Makes for easy tightening, especially for the old age gray-kids who get frequent visits from Arthur Itis.Considering it is the next to lowest priced stand on Amazon, the listed features make the Gibralter 8710 a more than excellent choice.