Hi,

It’s been a while, just finished a major home remodel so the dust has literally settled and I’m back. I got this drum back in December 2021 from my good friend Steve Maxwell. It’s an all original time capsule of a great era in vintage snare drums.

1937 LEEDY 6.5 x 14 ORIENTAL PEARL BROADWAY PARALLEL MODEL

THE SHELL:

Collectors know this finish by two names; Ludwig & Ludwig and Slingerland named it Abalone Pearl and Leedy chose to name it Oriental Pearl. Per Rob Cook’s DRUM COLORS BOOK this finish was around from 1934-37. The internal date stamp is 3706 (June 1937) so this is near the end of the production run of Oriental Pearl for Leedy. The OP finish was in excellent condition although someone tried to polish the finish with the heads and hardware attached so there was a lot of left over schmutz under the heads and behind the hardware, no big deal as the shell cleaned up and polished up nicely. The white interior was very clean with a clean date stamp. The badge grommet was tight.

THE HARDWARE:

The nickel plated hardware was in very good shape and only needed a minor cleaning and polishing. Leedy had a number of parallel mechanism versions from the 1920s through the 1930s. The mechanism on this drum is the 2nd version of the 2nd generation of Leedy parallel strainers. The mechanism is smooth and the self-aligning snares are all there and straight. Now for a little geek-a-tron minutia: As you can see in the photo there are 4 screws on the exterior that attach both sides of the parallel mechanism to the shell, but the top two screws have washers and the bottom two do not and to add to the mystery, the top two screws are different than the bottom two screws and finally, the top two screw holes are drilled differenly than the bottom two screw holes. I talked to my good friend and fellow collector Bill Wanser (Olympic Drums & Percussion) and he has also seen this same occurrence on his and other Leedy Broadway Parallel snare drums. Also a special thanks to Bill for helping me to identify what version of parallel strainer I have. The calf heads (metal flesh hoops) look to be original or at least of-the-era to the drum. I’ve also added a photo of an earlier version (Broadway Dual version 1) of an Oriental Pearl Broadway Dual Model (thank you Mark Cooper).

Enjoy!

Mike Curotto