As a youngster learning to play the drums in the 80s, I often heard negative things about Pearl drums. For some reason, maybe because their entry-level kits weren’t fantastic, the company had developed a bit of a dodgy reputation. Consequently, I got it into my fourteen-year-old head that my snare drum wasn’t all that great. It wasn’t terrible by any means, but because my drum tutor played top of the range Sonor drums, I felt I had a pretty good idea of what a snare could and should sound like. (It turns out I didn’t know shit, but we’ll get to that in a moment.)
I experimented a lot to get the best sound out of it. I remember discovering an Aquarian coated head worked really well in conjunction with different dampening methods. It usually sounded best with the top head pretty tight, and a little bit of dampening using the internal damper.
The so-called Stewart Copeland drum or Model 4214 was actually called the Custom model. In many of the old catalogues it uses this reference, and sometimes just the model number. A lot of words were lost in translation from the original Japanese text. It is a Ludwig 400 homage, whereas the often confused Jupiter model with it’s parallel action strainer, was the homage to the Ludwig Supersensitive.
As regards the bronze Black Beauty drum, the story I remember from an old Ludwig employee was that the management at Ludwig were pretty sharp on controlling costs. When the metal buyer bought sheet metal, he would go for the keenest price at the time. As they were black nickel plating the Black Beauty drums, it was felt that sheet bronze, at a lower price than sheet brass, was the way to go. No drummer will be able to tell the difference between a brass or bronze drum…I defy any drummer to be able to do this. After the black nickel plating, the brightness has already been dampened. It seems that dealers were getting feedback about the shells not being brass, so the secret was out in the open. next thing, Bill Ludwig was extolling the supreme quality of the ‘new’ bronze-shelled Black Beauty drums, and all advertising stated bronze shells. This was the Selmer period 1988-1991. After a short time, drummers were asking for the old brass shelled Black Beauty so after1994 all BB drums have had brass shells. Strangely, the re-issue hand-engraved drums in 1991 were supposedly bronze shelled, but I have a very earl number of these Limited Editions and it’s a brass shell. Rule of thumb,if buying a Black Beauty, you need to see the colour of the raw metal before parting with your cash. The stamped shells with B, BZ, BS,BR are also a minefield – e.g. BR is stamped on both brass and bronze shells, it was like this before someone realised that BR could mean either.Caveat emptor!!!
Great stuff – very interesting! It’s so difficult to find any accurate information on this stuff.