NB: Sorry, for some reason this site does not let my photos post right side up...any suggestions would help as this only happens here.

HI,

In my early days of collecting I was drawn to engraved DeLuxes (Black Beauties) and out of the ordinary finishes. One of my favorite 1920s-30s finishes is Ludwig & Ludwig’s Peacock Pearl. Over the years I have tried to collect as many different “runs” of this finish. The following is what I have collected as of this writing. There are a few standouts that I will explain later in the article.

Some history of Peacock Pearl taken from Rob Cook’s THE LUDWIG BOOK page 153:

“Ludwig cataloged Peacock Pearl from 1928 to 1932. The author has further broken that down to “Peacock I” (1928-30) and “Peacock II” (1930-32). Peacock II is the same finish that Leedy called Rainbow Pearl. To further complicate matters, Ludwig did not have a finish called Rainbow Pearl but did catalog an outfit of Lavender Pearl drums which they named the Rainbow Pearl kit.”

A few out-of-the-ordinary models are a 6.5 x 14 solid maple/DeLuxe Super-Sensitive and a 6.5 x 15 Super-Ludwig.

I have also added for comparison a photo of two Leedy Rainbow Pearl snare drums and to further add to the Peacock Pearl/Rainbow Pearl word soup I have also included a photo of a Slingerland Opal Pearl (1929-38) snare drum that, as you can see, looks like all the others.

As always, I welcome your comments and your photos of this classic finish.

Enjoy!

Mike Curotto

[email]mike@curottodrums.com[/email]