ANOTHER PEARL?

I've acquired a lot of snares these past few years. The one thing I lacked was a real, honest to goodness fat snare. So when I saw this in the Facebook Marketplace, I was immediately drawn to it. The dimensions were perfect for what has become popular in the past few years, the hybrid fat snare / floor tom. Web searches suggested this is a 1990s 14”x10” Pearl CMS 1410 "Competitor" Mahogany Marching Snare.  

The seller was in Pampanga, and the drum had to shipped by cargo. But he was enthusiastic and easy to deal with. So after a failed, then a subsequently delayed attempt to transfer payment online, things were ironed out and the drum arrived two days later. After required alcohol disinfection, I wiped down the hoops, installed new Evans Hydraulic batters and Remo Ambassador Snare heads, and cleaned and lubricated all the tension rods. It now sits between the kick drum and the 16" floor tom. I'm still dialing in the perfect tuning, but it's already pretty close to what I want. 

You might be wondering if I'm a Pearl endorser, as all my drums are made by them. I swear it isn't intentional. It just ended up that way by chance. Whatever, since everyone is still stuck here working at home because of Covid 19, I won't be able to play out with this big boy. But until I get some time alone her at home, it will be interesting discovering how sensitive it will be at low volumes. 

BIG AND BRASSY

While my snare collection grown these past two years, the trend had been to go smaller in size and higher in pitch. I felt it was time to go the other way, deeper and lower. I first saw this snare three years ago on OLX (now Carousell). It looked immaculate in the picture, as if it had never been used. My research revealed it was a slightly rare mid-1990s Pearl Masters B-5314D Brass Shell snare. However, all I could do was drool because the “fixed price” was way too expensive. So I just checked it out periodically to see if the seller changed her mind. 

A couple of weeks ago, I figured I had enough saved up to get myself something nice for Christmas. So I set my sights on a 14”x6.5” snare. There were a trio of them in FB Marketplace that caught my attention. The first was a classic mint early-2000s Pearl Sensitone Elite Brass in black nickel finish. Unfortunately, someone beat me to it a day after it went online. The second, slightly cheaper, was a current model Pearl Sensitone Aluminum. Again, someone beat me to it a day later. The last, and cheapest was an early 1990s Pearl Steel Shell.  But didn’t really appeal to me because it was only in fair shape. Even it it was cheap, I would have to spend extra money on new heads and hoops to get it in really good shape. 

Frustrated, I checked back with the Masters Brass. On a whim, I made a wild half-price offer, expecting to be tagged as "barat" by the seller. I was very surprised to get a reply stating the price could be dropped by 25%. It was still more expensive than the other three, but I had enough money for it. So I sealed the deal and picked it up a couple of days later, lest someone beat me to it again. The included original case was a bit musty, but the drum was mint. I found out that the seller was the wife of Rey Lim, drummer for the legendary band PenPen. He bought the drum but apparently hardly used it, if at all. 

I played around softly with the tuning for a couple of days because I was busy reading student papers, and nothing seemed extraordinary about the sound. But the moment I started playing music on it, magic exploded. It has a deep growl which turns to a roar the harder you hit the center of the head, at all tunings. At low tuning it stays focused and full, not floppy and dull. At the other end, it refuses to choke even at very high tuning. And playing closer to the hoop unleashes all sorts of throaty colors. Finally, It is LOUD. It’s not a cantankerous, but a forceful kind of loud, like body blows between heavyweight boxers. 

It's going to be a big and brassy holiday season :-)

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UPDATE 25 January 2023

Some musical instruments come to us as finished articles. Everything about them is both evident and consistent, the way they look, way they sound, and the way they respond to playing. They have no need for modification or tinkering. They’re exactly what you want, and expected. But others are filled with contradictions. You know they have special virtues, but they don’t seem to want to let them out all at the same time. This makes one wonder if and when this will ever happen at all. This past week I realized my Pearl Masters Brass 14x6.5 snare is one of the latter. 

This snare has been with me for three years now, I’ve tried all sorts of setups and tunings, but never quite “got” it perfect. On the outside it looks polished and refined, with the highest quality accoutrements, befitting its designation as a top of the line model. But the sound is the complete opposite. It is loud, wild, brutish, containing all sorts of weird overtones and buzzes. It has perplexed me to the point of considering giving up and selling it because of its refusal to comply with my intentions. 

This past week I’ve been in isolation in my drum room due to a mild case of COVID 19, and the only physical activity I’ve been capable of is fiddling with the setups of individual drums for a few minutes at a time. After avoiding it for days, I finally got down to the brass Masters. But this time, instead of revering it like a deity, I tried to bring out its wild side. First, massive 42-wire snares are usually called upon to unleash extra sizzle. I tried this once when it was new to me, but was not impressed. Maybe it was because the snap was too loose. But for some unknown reason, it worked today. Maybe it was because of todays extra high reso head and medium high batter. 

Second, I did what may be considered sacrilege by purists, sticking a 1 inch piece of cushion mounting tape to the reso head. I did this to tame an errant after-buzz that has been bugging me forever. I thought it was hardware related. But after 2 rounds of tightening all screws, I concluded it was caused by the interaction of one particularly odd shell resonant frequency. Also, the tape not only tamed the errant buzz, but also smoothed the decay of the wide snare wires. 

This is the first time that everything fell into place for this drum. It still has a very rich timbre of brass snares that make it great for live performance, but balanced enough that all it needs to dry it up for studio recording is a small spot of moongel. 

This is the first cohesive setup I’ve had with this drum. But I’m guessing this works only in the confines of my drum room. Experience tells me that acoustic instrument sounds change depending on venue and/or application. But I now have more faith now that I’ve found a starting point. 

PANG!

Two years ago, I bought a Pearl Short Fuse 10” x 4” snare. It was my first new snare in over 40 years, and the first I bought with my own money. I got it because JB’s annual 40% off sale made it irresistably cheap, and I always wanted an auxilliary snare to contrast my trusty 14” x 5.5” main snare. But when I got home and disassembled it to replace the stock heads with better ones, it became clear why it was so cheap. The wood was soft, the bearing edges were rough, and the throwoff was wonky. I stuck with it though because it looked and sounded really cute. I also figured it would never have to go through the rigors of heavy gigging because I haven’t play outside of my home in years. But these issues continued to bug me nevertheless.

Lately I thought of upgrading the throw off, but that would entail not just buying better parts, but drilling holes in the soft and fragile wood shell to accommodate them. In the end, I finally decided on another first. It would be the first time I would ever sell one of my working musical instruments, and replace it with something better. So I cleaned and preened it to mint condition, posted it in the Facebook marketplace, and priced it at 30% off the price of a brand new one. A few minutes after I posted it, my messenger lit up. By the time I sold it to the first responder the next day, I had had 15 serious inquiries. The buyer came all the way from Cavite on Maundy Thursday, so there was no traffic. From our chitchat he seemed like an unsung but working professional musician. So I warned him about the throwoff, gave suggestions on tuning and maintenance, and sent him on his way.

At the same time I planned the sale, I called all the JB branches in the area, and asked if they had the upgrade drum I wanted, a Pearl Firecracker steel 10” x 5” (FCS1050), which would on sale for 25% off. I found one in Cubao. So I called my suki in Trinoma to get it so I could pick it up from them. I got it on Easter Sunday, replaced the stock heads with a Coated Ambassador batter and Aquarian Classic Clear snare side, and tuned it high.

A Firecracker for Easter. PANG!

CRAZY-BOINGY-GONGY-TRASHY-DARK

Earlier this month I saw a pair of these Silken Trois Thin Ride 20"s at a local music chain for the list price of PhP 9,990.00. They had the same basic ugly-looking, crazy-boingy-gongy-trashy-dark sound as my other Trois cymbals, but was a better alternate ride than my 20" crash because it had a higher ping, and had the same roaring wash as my 16" crash. While I passed on them because I'm a cheapskate, I told the salesperson that I'd get one if they dropped the price by half.

My wish came true a few weeks later when the store FB page announced that all Silken cymbals were discounted by 50% (PhP 4,995.00). They had two available. The first one had a higher ping, a relatively focused wash that went on forever, and a hum that lasted even longer. The second had a lower ping, and a very scattered but shorter wash and hum. Also, I just noticed last weekend that my two Trois crashes had spots with slightly different "pitches" when played softly with mallets, as much as a major 3rd. I checked this out on these rides and the same was true. Apparently, the hammering is not even, hence the intervals. It was a good thing that I was the only customer in the store so it was quiet enough for me to really hear every little sound. In the end I chose the first, more focused one because it slotted in with my other cymbals. I have a recording session on Monday, and this will surely tag along. 

THE PAISTE TRIO

Just before Christmas, I saw a locally rare 22" A Zildjian Swish Knocker in JB Music MOA. I've always been intrigued by the concept, but never actually played one. So I couldn't fathom why it didn't live up to the hype when I finally played it. I didn't know if it was this particular cymbal, or the model in general, but it just sounded uninteresting. Nevertheless, I kept thinking about it over the holidays. A few days into the New Year, I saw someone unloading his stash of Paiste cymbals at insanely cheap prices on the Facebook Marketplace.

I always liked small bells. My mother had an old set of four small ones on a rope, and I tickled them every time I passed by them. But I never had any of my own. So when I saw the seller had a pair of bells, I checked the models up on Youtube.  They seemed to perfectly fit a sound installation I was preparing for a hip art gallery, featuring cymbal wash.  Because they were so cheap, I jumped on them immediately. The 10" 2002 Mega Bell sounds like a cymbal passed through a wah-wah, and the 6" 2002 Bell Chime sound is like an energizer bunny, it goes on, and on, and on and ..... . I don't know if I'll ever use it for a band gig, but I'll surely tickle these whenever I pass by them.    

I had already sealed the deal on the pair of bells when I saw the seller also had a 20” Sound Creation Dark China, which I’ve read is the stuff of legend. My mind was still on the Swish Knocker, and I hesitated because it wasn't something I felt was needed. I asked the seller to bring it along anyway, just in case 1) I would like it if I heard it, and 2) I could cough up the extra money. He was clearly trying to seduce me when he said it was the one cymbal in the collection he didn’t really want to part with, but offered me an additional discount if I added it to the package. All I had to do was tap it once with my finger and I was so blown away that I couldn’t leave without it. And just like that, the dissonance over the inexplicable dissapointment with the Swish Knocker, and the fear of having too many China cymbals, vanished. If my Stagg Traditionals sounds like Chinese opera singers, and my Paiste 2002 22" roars like a typhoon, this one sounds like a mellifluous baritone.

2019 is shaping up to be a great sonic year :-)

LEGEND

13 June 2018 - I’ve always wanted a 13” snare since I played one in Shinji’s Soundcreation studios back in 2005. Since then, I’d read a lot about the Pearl Omar Hakim Signature a lot on the internet. Legend has it of being 13” x 5” of lively funky poppy goodness at any tuning. But local availability had always been few and far between. Both JB Music and local want ads hadn’t had them for years, and it seems people who own them don’t let them go easily.

Three weeks ago, I spotted a mint condition Pearl Omar Hakim signature snare in the Facebook marketplace. The price was right, and it came with an SKB hard case. But the seller was from faraway Meycauayan. After two failed attempts for a meetup in Quezon City I gave up. Just then, I saw an Facebook marketplace ad for another one, right inside of UP Diliman. It wasn’t as mint as the first one, and it didn’t come with a case. But it was cheaper, and accessible. So I closed the deal and sped there as fast as I could. I gathered that the seller is a session musician who at one point was in a band of a friend. The reason for selling, which was posted by his brother who lived in the UP campus, implied he was quitting. But the seller himself said he had one too many snares already.

So I’m now the third owner of this drum (Serial # OH 070228). I’d say it came in “fair” condition. First, the good news. The shell is round, finish is very good, bearing edges and snare bed are smooth, and the throw off is solid. And now for the not so good news. The hoops had some pitting. So a WD40 and aluminum foil scrub smoothed out most of it. Two lugs have hairline cracks. Fortunately, they're not in an area that will be stressed when screwed in and under tension. The tension rods are sort of matte, the threads are difficult to clean, and there’s one odd one. So I'm still deciding if it not being shiny will bother me enough to buy new ones. I dearly wanted to put a coated Ambassador batter and Ambassador snare side, but the local distributor hasn't had 12"s or 13"s since last January. So I again ended up with the more sober Aquarian TC batter and CCSN combo.

I practiced with it only briefly this afternoon, so I'm still finding its tessitura. Each tuning from low to high has a happy, excitable character, but with unique timbres as tensions increase. So to my ears, this drum lives up to its legend.  Now I have to figure out how to setup four (!) snare drums in one setup. 

2018 UPDATE

It’s been three years since my last post, and there have been some additions since then.

Cymbals came first. In November of 2015, I bought two new cymbals. Two events led me to these. First, something clicked when I got a chance to play a set Kerope cymbals early that year. I felt they finally delivered the oldskool dark and trashy sounds which regular K's promised but never took to the max. And then I heard Antonio Sanchez’ cymbals on the Pat Metheny Unity Group album. They were so radically different from anything I had heard and played before that it took me a while to warm up to the sound. But once I did, I was hooked. Unfortunately, the price for admission to these wonderful sounds are frightening, or so I thought. I was window shopping one day at Lyric Music main branch, and was about to leave when the salesman directed me to the Silken display. I had heard about Silken before, but my first impression was that this was just another cheap, small, funky cymbal brand (which I think was already closed shop). I was unimpressed with the Sebring, Avus, and Borealis series, but one hit on the 20" (1980gms) Trois blew my mind. It wasn't only dark and trashy, but CRAZY-BOINGY-GONGY-TRASHY. I guess it's what you get when a Chinese cymbalsmith tries to appropriate vintage Turkish cymbal sounds. About the only thing right about my first impression was the price, less than half of big name brands, and another half off due to the store's Super Sale. I didn't have enough cash on me, so I had it reserved until the weekend. I went back bright and early that Saturday morning, and left the store not only with the 20", but with an 18" (1500gms) too. After decades of filling my cymbal collection with bright sounding cymbals, I now made space in my kit and my mind for the opposite.

Then came snares. I had been listening to and watching a lot of Robert Glasper and Cory Henry since last year, and noticed a lot of smaller, high pitched snares. No matter how high I tensioned my one and only beloved 14" steel snare, I couldn’t get the same kind of pop. But things changed when I walked casually into JB Music Trinoma on the 4th of November 2017. I was not planning to buy anything because I was saving for family Christmas gifts. But everything in the store was on clearance, 40% off for that weekend. So I started digging for a bargain. There was also a "new old stock" Pearl 10x5 maple going for about US$100. I had never seen one like it in the flesh or on the internet. It wasn't an M80 or a Firecracker or a popcorn, but it was made in Taiwan. It came with Ambassador batter and reso and an ISS mount. While the price was tempting, I would have needed either a new stand or tom arm + clamp, which would add another US$30. All these were already too much for an impulse buy. Then I saw a Pearl “Short Fuse” 10”x5” Poplar snare (SFS10/C31) for the equivalent of US$55. I though it was a steal because it already came with the L-rod and clamp. The problem was that the stock reso head was torn, and none of the other music stores in the area had a replacement. I was ready to pass on it when the salesperson remembered they had another one, which they had to dig under the stocks to get to. So I had lunch first, and when I came back they had found it.  I added an Ambassador 10" batter, and the total bill was just US$60. The sound literally "pops." I still can't get over how something so small and cheap can make such a musically amusing sound. It’s now the cutest part of my kit, next to my 8" mini china. 

But that was just the intro. In 16 May 2018 I saw another small snare in one of my Facebook marketplaces. It was an early 2000s Pearl SensiTone Custom Alloy Steel 12”x5” “Power Soprano” (STS1250 Japan a.k.a. S-5012 U.S.A.) snare. The SensiTone series are heavy duty, well designed/crafted drums that can take the rigors of the professional musician. They can be expensive, but are worth every centavo IF you can afford them. So then this showed up in one of my FaceBook marketplaces going for a song, I had to have it. This one was rare because it hardly shows up in internet drum fora, and has been out of production for more than a decade. The seller said his singer-wife (must be a “biyahera”) bought it for him in Japan just 2 years ago, so I suspect she got it second hand there. The batter head was toast, so I bought a new one. The strainer was still nice and smooth but had excess oil on the joints. The reso head and the puresound snare wires were ok. The Superhoops had spots of rust underneath the chrome. The outer shell and lugs had minor dust and pitting. The tension rods were not all the same length, and one of the lugs was missing gaskets. In short, signs abounded that this drum had led a colorful and interesting life. But these didn't deter me. I knew they could be cleaned because I'd done it before. So after completely disassembling it, the shell and hardware went into a Coca-Cola bath, were stripped with aluminum foil, and polished with car wax, and all the tension rods were replaced. The result isn't immaculate, but I don't mind. I just hope all this preening will extend the life of this wonderful instrument. The sound is everything I hoped for. It takes a wide range of tuning, and can go from sensitive and soft, to loud and explosive, much like my old 14" snare but much higher in pitch and more focused because of the heavier hoops. The left side of my kit just got a whole lot more interesting. I'll be looking into other positionings though, because I"m not sure my back can deal with the twisting.

As it stands, my kit is a mashup of old and new, shiny and rusty, cheap and not cheap, cute and frightening, sonorous and cacophonous parts. To me, music needs contrast, dynamics, and even contradictions. This latest round of additions just concretized that idea.