I still play my 1969 Pearl Presidents (which I got new in "69) everyday. I upgraded the stands to 1974/5 Pearl deluxe models, but I still have all the old stands packed away. I had to replace the snare strainer as the curved slot in the top wore away and no longer worked properly. I have a number of kits, but it's surprising how often I get requests from sound engineers to "bring those old Pearls!".
As far as the names of the available wrap colors, I've noticed that Pearl often called the same wraps by different names in different catalogs. I still have my "Pearl catalog '69" and it's different than other Pearl catalogs from the same year. It seems they produced different catalogs for differing regions (I don't know why). I've talked with Gene Okamoto from Pearl about this and he stated that "there's a lot we don't know or understand about the history of Pearl".
The Presidents are definitely fiberglass, not the plastic/wood fiber which came out later. I know there is a lot of confusion about this fact. My catalog talks about the fiberglass shells unconditionally guaranteed for five years and shows the shells being made. I sent nice color photocopies to Pearl along with pics of my set. They thanked me and said they were going to include the material in their timeline, but it never appeared (I assume because it has differing information than their current timeline).
