And the lack of those two inches makes the floors more playable, helping your stick bounce. With so much bottom coming from the African mahogany it sounded just as deep as most 16"x16" drums, but more focused. It seems that 16"x14" is now as popular as the more traditional 16"x16" and it makes perfect sense here. You don't feel anything is cluttering the drum's sound. Tuned right in the sweet spot around medium tension it was both rich and thunderous. The toms, with their slightly rounded bearing edges had a warm attack and we particularly took to the 14"x12" tom. The kit had obviously been played when it arrived and so was already tuned. Tuning the whole kit is a joy, owing also to the stainless steel bolts - which really glide in and out. Most striking is the new twin-mount Swivel-Tube lug design.Īlthough these are mini-tubes, they actually include a swivel nut so there's little danger of cross-threading. Other fittings are well up to the high standard you expect from Pearl. We were surprised at the weight of the floor toms, for example, although the small toms with their aluminium Opti-Mounts felt about normal. Thin shells might make this kit a little lighter, but you wouldn't know it - there is plenty of hardware to bulk it up. Presumably the idea is to mimic the yellowed, smoke-stained look of old marine pearl, but in reality it just looks dowdy. The VMP of the review kit was our only real disappointment with the entire kit. Four of the five stock lacquer finishes are exclusive to Europe. Whether this is better or not, these shells are superb in every respect.Īs for the outside, Pearl offers five stock lacquer finishes and 26 special-order lacquer finishes, plus two wraps - Polished Chrome and Vintage Marine Pearl, protected by clear lacquer. Vintage drums were often made this way the result is a little overlapping join inside each shell. Pearl constructs its shells in a different manner from almost all other manufacturers - certainly the big names - overlapping the plies using scarf joints rather than butt-joining them. Peeping inside the snare you see creamy birch, while inside the large toms and bass drum is a ruddy brown mahogany. The snare is six-ply with two inner plies of birch and four outer plies of maple with 45° bearing edges. The 10" (and optional 8") tom blends outer maple and inner birch, the 12" tom is 100 percent maple and the floor toms and bass drums blend outer maple and inner African mahogany.
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