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.