Well, yeah, there was some connection, but only in that TAMASumo Dude owned the name and rights for a while, other than that, no real interest for Camco. It's not like they were building stencils, they were a stencil brand.Coffee Break2

I think this thread should be dedicated to finding the third player and tracking it down to a tee. We know they are lurking, and I wonder if the other Hoshino was the foundry, and later got into building complete drums instead of just pouring hot metal? Let's see if this timeline holds water, and if we can finally get some real differentiation between the companies, the hardware is not leading anywhere, except some of the very distinct stuff, like a couple of types of endcaps for rails, and the triangular tom and bracket mounts, and Pearls infamous pipe tom arms. Can someone post those pix please? I have the end caps from Star that seem to be used only on their stuff, and if Wayne can figure out how to get his pix the correct size, he has an amazingly nice BDP set of Star drums, with some of that proprietary hardware as well. Let's look at the stuff we know for sure to be Pearl, Star and Hoshino specific and see if that leads somewhere. The Hoshino stuff I am aware of has one distinguishing feature, and please don't beat me up, because I am not certain even of that, and it seems to be those plastic bass hoops.

So, let's see if our detective work pans out. I think we have just about got this figured out and can begin to identify more accurately the major players, if we can determine some of the most distinguishing factors associated with each brand of builder, then maybe we can start to nail down the stencils to a specific builder, rather than continue banging our heads.....on the wall, unless you are just into the pain.....

I just hope we don't stumble on another blatant mystery, like maybe it was Yamaha all along building the mystery stencils and selling them through a clearing house.LoLoLoLo