DF no.301 - 5 vintage Pearl snares, Pearl DLX, Chad Smith Ltd Tricolon, B4514 CoB Stewart Copeland

Got the 1980s Pearl DLX out and wanted to try out my five Pearl snares with it, including the latest find - the glorious 6" maple. The kit's been bagged up for a year but I'm going to gig it soon so need it ready. (Wish I'd spent a little more time tweaking the 13" rack tom's tuning, or just taken it off and played as a 4pc. It's annoying me here.) The DLX been my main kit for everything since 1990, until 2020 when I began to acquire other vintage kits.

There very little muffling. External Pearl clip-ons on the toms, nothing in the bass drum, and just a small leather Snareweight one on the snares - you can see when it's down or up (off).

Hearing protection: all of these drums - the snares and the kit - are fucking loud! I didn't have my fitted plugs in for the first two snares. That's just damned stupid of me and I regretted it.
SNARE DRUMS:
1. Pearl Professional Series 6" steel snare (M514D I think is the model - came with the DLX kit). Gladstone throw (adjustable tension both ends, extended snare wires). This has an Evans Genera Dry head on top which basically kills most of the tone of the drum. You can put it up and mic it onstage quickly and easily and the soundies love it. No excessive ring, solid sound. It's a heavy drum, a fairly thick steel shell and Pearl Super Hoops.
2. Pearl 1970s 6" steel snare. I bought this hoping it might be brass. It wasn't, but it was cheap ($NZ64) and everything except the shell is the same as the Copeland snare (see below), so I thought it'd be good for parts. It's thinner steel than the Pro Series (above) and has lighter, 1.8mm hoops (I think Super Hoops are 2.4mm steel.) The drum is totally unmuffled and has the open, ringy, classic steel snare sound that you know is going top cut through the guitars even when they're turned up to 11. I like this drum a lot and won't be stripping it for parts. Probably gig it with the kit this month.
3. This is the most recent acquisition - allegedly a 1980s DX snare, 6" maple shell. It has die-cast hoops, which may have replaced Super Hoops that it probably came with. I'm not sure what the wood is. It was described as mahogany but the visible plies look like maple to me. It could be a mix of plies like the DLX, with Luan (Asian mahogany) , birch, and maple outer plies. I posted about in in a vintage Pearl Facebook group and the consensus is that its parentage may be uncertain.
Whatever it is, it's a really beautiful looking and great sounding drum and I'm very lucky to now own it. I feel it sounds the best of all these snares. What do you think?
4. This is the Pearl Model B4514 chrome-over-brass snare drum 'of mysterious origin' (i.e. not a Tama snare) that Stewart Copeland played on early Police albums (not the actual drum, just the same model : - ). It still has the original Pearl 1.8mm triple-flanged hoops it came with. Copeland played it with a diecast hoop on top (a Gretsch hoop?) allegedly because he dented-up the TF hoop with constant rimshots. It's a local 2nd-hand bargain I am proud to own.
5. Pearl Chad Smith Limited tricolon snare drum. (Sorry for the spelling mistake in the captions.) This has 3 parts to the shell, all 3mm thick, two brass, one stainless steel. It's constructed like a Pearl free-floater snare. The first thing I did was to take it apart and see how the shell sections went together. I was thoroughly impressed by the level of engineering throughout this drum. 100 were made and only 50 were released on the U.S. market. I wonder - is there another one in New Zealand?
(Black screen bit - the Nikon D600 has a cutoff time of 20 minutes for video, and it arrived just as I was attempting to go all Chad Smith with this snare! Ha ha. You'll notice, then, that I didn't attempt anything Copelandish with snare no.4. I would struggle to approach his unique style.)

I'm sure there are folk out there who know a lot more about these drums than I do. Please enlighten me in the Comments. It's hard to find info on Pearl snares so your comments would really help.

Cymbals - a bit random for this setup:
- 15" hats, 70s A. Zildjian on top, 70s/80s black-stamp Paiste 2002 Sound Edge below
- Paiste Masters 18" thin dark crash (the very cymbal played by Phil Rudd in an AC/DC video made in Auckland, NZ, a couple of years ago. Purchased from the video studio).See    • AC/DC - Realize (Official Video)  
- A. Zildjian 10" splash
- Paiste Masters 20" dark ride
- Istanbul Agop 22" Cindy Blackman OM ride.
Sticks are Vic Firth Peter Erskine Signature. They're a medium-light stick with very small tips. I found myself using them for the first clip so thought I'd best stick with them for the rest. Rather like them actually.
Recorded in my usual low-tech fashion - an older-model Tascam field recorder either side of the kit, about 1.5m away, and a small, crappy condenser mic overhead and plugged into the Nikon DSLR. Minor EQ and compression applied in Audacity (free version).