MUSIC GEAR
SEPTEMBER 24, 2021
Story Of Pearl Drum Company
The Story of Pearl drum company that creates high quality drums and accessories since decades ago and selling drum kits worldwide
Pearl was founded on April 2, 1946 in Sumida, Tokyo by Katsumi Yanasigawa. At first he began manufacturing music stands then in 1950 shifted to manufacturing drums and renamed his company to “Pearl Industry. Ltd.”
In 1953, the company expanded its products and the name changed again to “Pearl Music Instrument Company”. By this year they manufactured drum kits, marching drums, timpani, Latin percussion, cymbals and accessories.
Mitsuo Yanasigawa, Katsumi’s eldest son, joined Pearl in 1957 and formed a division to export Pearl products internationally. Pearl built a 1.400 m2 factory in Chiba, Japan in 1961 to meet increasing worldwide demand for drum kits.
In the 1960’s , the company stopped making shells for other companies and began manufacturing drums under their own name and used the Pearl logo for the first time.
In 1966 Pearl distributed its first pro drum kit, the President Series, then in the early 1970’s Pearl was distributed in the U.S. by Norlin, the parent company of Gibson guitars. Their most popular series of drum kits is the Export (EX, ELX, EXR and ECX) series which is also the most popular set ever sold (the 1 millionth Export kit was produced in 1995). The series were discontinued and replaced by the Vision series and later reintroduced in 2013.
Pearl developed their own technique for their drums shells. Each ply is placed into a cylinder and pressure is applied from both sides. The shell is also heated during the process to boil the glue, making it absorbed through the wood grain thus sealed the shells very tightly. This creates a very strong drum shell with incredible durability. The technique is know as SST (Superior Shell Technology).
Besides drum kits, Pearl also produce snare drums, hardware and pedals. This products can be bought separately or come standard with the kits, depending on the model. Low-end kits come with the snare while high-end series exclude the snares.
One of Pearl’s major innovations was the introduction of the Uni-Lock tilter on their tom mounts and cymbal stands in 1982. This feature allowing players to make more precise angle adjustments to their preferred toms and cymbals positions.
For the pedals most drum pedals of Pearl come equipped with Power Shifter heel plates that make the players able to adjust the pedal’s feel by sliding the plate.
Endorsers for Pearl drums are many famous drummers, some of them are : Jeff Porcaro (Toto), Ian Paice (Deep Purple), Dennis Chambers, Mike Mangini (Dream Theater), Eric Singer (Kiss), Omar Hakim, Ray Luzier (Korn) and many more.
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