1971. Kustom Electronics, mostly known for their eponymous line of guitar and bass amplifiers, purchase the Camco drum company and move it to Chanute Kansas.

The story goes that upon purchasing the company, Kustom sent some workers to Oak Lawn to see how the drums were built.

They were expecting to find blueprints and manufacturing routines but found nothing so concrete. Being that the build quality we see in the Oaklawn era is typically very high, one can presume that the workers there knew very well what they were doing. They just never bothered to make notes that detailed their processes! Despite "in the know" conjecture that Chanute kits are somehow inferior to Oaklawn badged drums, we see precisely the same six-ply Jasper shells (with six-ply rings) and hardware that were used in Oak Lawn drums used throughout the entire Chanute era. In short, they're roughly the same drums with a different badge, (although sometimes a few oddly placed tom brackets and things like that did indeed slip through the cracks!)

The band Creedence Clearwater Revival used Kustom Amps and drummer Doug Clifford was the most visible Camco player of the era. His walnut stain kit Oaklawn, USA kit probably spurred lots of orders as we see a vast majority of Chanute drums also with the walnut stain finish.  Many wraps were offered but it is much less common to see them when a Chanute kit is found.

Perhaps reflecting the heavier music that was coming in vogue at the time, it's during the Chanute era that 24" bass drum become commonplace. These are made of the same 6 ply Jasper shells with reinforcing rings. Interestingly we see (although quite rarely) a few Oaklawn 24" bass drums made towards the end of that era. Those Oaklawn 24" bass drums that we've seen to date have a shell without reinforcing rings. (Oaklawn also did some late experimentation with very deep (for the era) 24" bass drums. These comprised an 8" and 10" shell joined together with a glue ring making it 18" deep. They're rare but they're out there)

Although Kustom was an established player in the music business and had international distribution channels, surprisingly we don't see Chanute era drums outside the US. It's likely the production run of two years was just too short to build that up.

Kustom was not a drum company at heart and must've decided to cut their losses by selling the company to Tom Beckmen who moved the company to Los Angeles. Big changes were in store!