Unless you're really going to be slamming on it, I'd leave them on the drum. There is also the option to tuck them away as to have the drum all original even further down the line. If it were mine, I'd stay with the originals.

I met with a pro at show who was in desperate search for orchestra batter and said none of the new ones sound as good he likes them with the center coating worn ,

I'm just saying

Hi there - I tried the drum out last night and it sounds awesome with that head on - problem is that it is so dirty that it now dirties my tom heads :-) So I pulled it off and fitted a coated ambassador but will clean it with some soap and warm water and then re-fit it. It does sound different than the ambassador - it's a little drier.

In fact the drum sounds - even with the ambassador - drier than my Acrolite (also with an ambassador) but I suppose that that is as a result of the extra lugs and the chrome coating. They are both very nice snares but quite different - which pleasantly surprised me.

Weird, isn't it, how different the Supraphonic and the Acrolite sound for sharing the same shell? My Supraphonic had a terrible case of Supracne, so I had the chrome stripped at a local plating house and then a friend of mine bead blasted it at work, and it still sounds just as different from my Acrolite (which I prefer).

I put it up to not just the number of lugs, but that the Imperial lugs individually have more mass than the bowtie lugs.

What I now desire is the third flavor of 5.5" Ludwig aluminum snare, the Standard with the beadless shell.

The original head is probably more equivalent to a Diplomat, rather than an Ambassador...thinner.