Can't wait to get these cleaned up. So, what is your impression of the Luan wood and sound? What heads work best on these?

-kellyj

I don't have any pics,but I had a pearl kit from early mid sixties with the oval slingy type badge and the red p,and the wrap was exactly the same,shine it up and it will look even better, although my lugs had pitting there was almost no fade when comparing to under the lugs,and that wrap looks killer under stage lights.

Hi kellyj,

I would call that nice blue colour 'innocent blue marine pearl':D

Can you make a pic of the rail consolette?

And another close-up pic of the badge? I can't clearly read those small words

below 'Bollero'.

And what's the inside look of the shells? Re-rings? Painted in grey colour?

Ralf

BTW: welcome to the club of MIJ-fans ...

Ralf, I'm surprised that there is no fade on the wrap and I like that "innocent" Baby Blue! It does remind me of softness and powder blue. The American "Sky-Blue blue pearl" is a much darker tone.

Here's a close-up of the badge which is a decal actually.

Jonnistix, you're right it's definitively Pearl. Upon closer inspection of the 8 tom mounts in total, onlyl the 12" tom was stamped "Pearl". The rest just have "Japan" stamped on them. What I love about these drums is the funky combination of knock-off Ludwig and Slingerland parts.

Yep, a new lover of MIJ here!Walking

Cheers!

-kellyj

Thanks for the pics.

So Pearl adapted the name 'Bollero' from the earlier Star's set with the same name ...

Means that one Japanese company copied from another Japanese one?! Strange.

Ralf

After Star left the stencil business to become TAMA, they allowed Pearl to take over many of the names they used. Also, St. Louis Music Supply, the largest of the US distributors, took all there business to Pearl, hence the reason they had to open a much larger factory in Taiwan, this is also when quality began to go downhill. If you look at your drums that are from about 73-74 on, they are, for the most part, junk, and Pearl made 90% of them in Taiwan, so it follows that they gave up quality for production capacity. It seems this period in time is when we see most everything go to crap, with the end of the "occupation" in Viet Nam and the oil embargo, everyone seemed hell bent on making money for their investors, not making quality products to compete, but then we also had all that cheap Japanese labor to compete with, same as today we are competing with China. Hell, we aren't competing with China, we just out source everything to them and let them build it cheap.

Good points... Ralf and jonnistix.

I'm wondering if I have a kit during the crap period. Doesn't seem to be??

Seems to be decent enough. The shells are in round and solid. The rims and other hardware seem ok for the quality level they were meant to be?

-kellyj

@jonnistix:

... If you look at your drums that are from about 73-74 on, they are, for the most part, junk, ...

I'm afraid I misunderstand: what do you mean with 'your drums'? The ones I own by myself - or are you talking about drums in general?

If you talk about my drums: they surely are not junk (just in opposite: I'd like to say they are high-end).

@kellyj:

No, Sir, that kit isn't crap: late Star's (and early Pearl's) are definitely no crap

as that was the time the Japanese drum-builders could easily loose an image if they would forget focusing both on quality AND cheap prices. At that time their competition (Rogers, Slingerland and Trixon, just to name the ones that were out of the market a little later) still were existing so that everyone would have returned immediately back to those wellknown drums (not to forget Sonor, Ludwig, Premier and others).

Ralf

I'd like to interject. First of all, Kellyj, that is a really, really nice set! I love the wrap. That's one of the cool things about the old MIJ's, that they had sooo much variety (or, so little consistency) in terms of how their final product ended up looking. This extends to the wraps. The blue pearls ranged from light sky blue to so dark as almost a purple-y pearl. You just never know what you're going to find.

As you know, your Bolleros were made by Pearl, but I think John has these dated a little late. Given the style of the badge, I would think they might be from the early 70s, but probably no later than that. The badge is somewhat like the Whitehall badge of that era, the larger oval one. Whitehall was also a Pearl stencil, that was based out of Chicago. If you see one from that era, it will most likely have lugs, mounts and a strainer identical to your Bolleros. These are one of my favorite eras of stencils. The shells have more plies, so they're a bit more solid, and you wont have the caving in issues that the early stencils have. And the lugs are much, much better quality in terms of the metal used, so they are more solid as well.

Anyway in regards to nailing down the year your drums were made, it really is sort of a guessing game. From the Pearl catalogs, you can see that these type of lugs were being used sometime around 1968:

http://www.vintagedrumguide.com/images/my_collection/literature/pearl/1968-pearl-catalog-11.jpg

And the strainer on your Bollero snare looks like it was first introduced in 1969 (the chrome and red sparkle snares):

http://www.vintagedrumguide.com/images/my_collection/literature/pearl/1969-pearl-catalog-13.jpg

So, from what we have to go on, all we can really say is that your drums were made no earlier than 1969. In terms of the name on the badge, that gets us into a whole other can of worms, as that is another area where consistency basically went out the door. For what it's worth, I believe that Bollero was a name used by Pearl first, then Star, then Peal again. But there is a possibility that the name was by both companies in overlapping years. So, confusion does sometimes reign in the field of MIJ research.

(There is what I believe is an earlier Pearl made Bollero snare one page 2 of the MIJ strainers thread: http://www.vintagedrumforum.com/showthread.php?t=20755)

Oh, and John wasn't saying that your drums were junk, he was talking about the later Taiwanese (MIT) Pearl stencils. And I think he's a bit harsh in that characterization as well. I would agree that the Taiwanese stencils definitely lack some of the character of the Japanese drums that we love so much. The wraps on the Taiwanese drums weren't as interesting (they were just plain boring) and Pearl switched to the 'diamond' lugs that went on everything from their high-end Jupiter snares to the cheap, really cheap student drums that have literally been thrown in the woods and left for dead.

(And, Ralf, when he says 'your drums,' it's a manner of speech as in 'the drums you would typically see from that era...')

Sorry Ralf, I intended to mean those (in general) that Pearl began pumping out after they moved most stencil production to Taiwan. Not the Japanese made stuff that is considered higher quality. The Pearl stuff that came out of Taiwan is really not up the quality standards of the earlier Japanese production, and even most of that, we know today, was not really much more than just entry level stuff.