Believe it or not, it's 10 years since my first Drumcheck, and coincidentally the first set I ever reviewed was also one of Pearl's. There's been a lot of water under the bridge since 1975, and many of the companies whose products I've looked at in the interim have fallen by the wayside. Britain alone has lost no less than half a dozen of its famous makers since them. The French too have suffered as have the Italians and the Germans. Even the mighty Americans have not been spared; their ranks have been depleted by defections and mergers. (Rumour has it that several prestigious US companies are up for grabs at the moment.) It could, of course, be argued that 10 years ago there were too many manufacturers chasing what was about to become a shrinking market anyway. Obviously new firms have sprung up to fill the gap, making in the main electronic sets.

Pearl drums would appear to have survived the decade admirably and here I am, 10 years later checking out their most upmarket set. It would seem this one has been created to compete with the most salubrious of Oriental sets. It has a 'Steinway-type' painted finish. (It's not the truth to say painted; it's actually lacquered 12 times and each coat is buffed by hand.) The shells are made from six plies of Maple which is cross-grained (ie, one play has grain which runs round the drum while the next will have it running from head to head), Pearl still butt their plies together at right angles to the bearing edge. The Maple is cured and aged before it's used, and the shells are formed under very high pressure. There are many other new features about the set which I'll fill you in on as we get to them.

GLX-22D50 is a five drum outfit which comes complete with extra-depth toms and bass drum, a brand new brass shelled snare drum, one straight and one boom cymbal stand, bass drum and hi hat pedals, snare stand and double tom holder.

The Bass drum

Not all GLX bass drums are extra deep, but the one I saw was. It measured 22" x 16" and had six ply wooden hoops. Like all the drums in the series it has 'Super Gripper' nut boxes; these are unique, as far as we Europeans are concerned, to Pearl. The nut box is hinged, and instead of normal gubbins inside we have a piece of rod coated in plastic with a hole tapped into it to accommodate the tension screw. This piece of rod is drilled so that it sits horizontally inside the box. The front part of the hinged portion has an indentation cast into it to located the horizontal rod/block. So, to get to the point, when we undo the tension rod a little (several turns) the nut-box hinges forward allowing the tension screw to float free. Hopefully you'll appreciate how easy this makes the task of changing broken heads. It should be an absolute boon to the drummer gigging at a high level where the show can't stop just because of a broken head! All Pearl tension screws now have thicker-than-usual plastic washers to stop them from de-tuning themselves with vibration.

Anyway, all that being equal this particular bass drum has a total of 20 super-grippers with 'T' handled tension screws and slightly remodelled pressed steel claws. (These have had their right angled bends made sharper inside so they don't mar the finish of the wooden hoop. The original Pearl claws had a profile which was designed for their old metal hoops). The double tom holder receiver block is set nicely forward to allow the two toms to sit close together yet still far away enough from the player to be comfortable. The spurs are the same ones which Pearl have been fitting to their drums for two or three years. A block is bolted to the shell which has a stop cast into it to arrest the spur itself as it swivels towards the front on its setting screw. The spurs themselves are telescopic with the facility at the bottom to make them rubber or metal spike ended. Large hand bolts lock the spurs out at the right position and back parallel with the shell to allow you to put the drum away. No felt strip damper is fitted and it would appear that the company feel (quite rightly) that modern players don't use them.

Tom toms

The two mounted drums have been elongated and measure 12" x 10" and 13" x 11". The floor tom, however, is the usual 16" x 16". These drums also have the Super Gripper nut boxes; 12 for each mounted drum and 16 for the floor standing instrument. They also share Pearl's newish Super Hoops which are triple flanged but a deal thicker than usual at just over 2mm. These hoops help to thicken the sound (like cast ones) and are also stronger and less likely to buckle. The double bent steel rod legs have wedge shaped conical feet and locate into cast blocks which are bolted to the side of the drum. Inside these blocks are the usual eye rings which exert pressure on the leg when the 'T' screw outside is tightened. These drums, too, have plastic washers on their square-headed tension screws. When the tensioners are removed from the nut-boxes, as I described with the bass drum, the screws and their horizontal inserts are left dangling and, of course, still located in the 'ears' of the hoop. The small toms have the usual Pearl pipe holding adjustable jaw clamp fitted to them to mount them to the double tom holder. The gap in the jaws may be fine tuned with a drum key and the block itself has a small rectangular hole cast into it to locate a cast memory clamp which fits around the tube of the holder proper. No dampers are fitted inside the toms but Pearl make a very good external damper these days which clips to the rim itself and locks in place with a large sand blasted wing bolt.

Snare drum

This particular snare drum is brand, spanking new. It has a brass shell, Super-Hoops, Super Gripper and a Gladstone type snare mechanism. It measured 14" x 6½" and the shell has an inverse flange at roughly 45°, a shallow snare touch area and no strengthening bead in its centre. The brass is lacquered and seems to be pretty permeable. 20 of those hinged nut-boxes are fitted to the snare and, for anybody who's interested, they have exactly the same mounting lugs as the old Pearl casings. This will allow you to change the ones on your old Pearl drums if you feel the need. If I were doing it I'd consider changing just the batter nut-boxes.

The snare mechanism is excellent; it's based on an old Billy Gladstone design which features screw adjustment for snare tension at both ends as well as an outrigger system with horizontal sprung rods which set the extra long, 20 strand metal snares out a little further over the shell. The on/off mechanism is part cast and locks on in a radial fashion. The butt end is adjustable too with a reasonably large knurled tensioner for the snares which are joined to it by a strip of plastic. This drum does actually have an underbatter-head-operating spring steel damper with control knob outside the shell. This particular piece of equipment works fine, but I feel its control knob, which has always looked incongruous, spoils the vintage look of the drum. A turned brass one would complement the shell more.

Heads

The batter heads on all the wooden drums are Remo Pin Stripes with clean, see-through Ambassadors underneath. The B714DX snare drum has a coated Ambassador batter and one of Remo's medium gauge snare heads.

Accessories

All the stands supplied have double-braced tripod legs and a height arrest clamp which is based on adjustable jaws with plastic wear-resisting inserts. The cymbal stands are numbered C-800W and B-800W. They're both three stage units with cast filters, which don't use splined ratchets to lock the angle; a locking screw simply pushes against a solid cylinder which has the filter rod joined to it. This rod is usefully long and has the usual collection of washers, felts and topping nuts. The top section of the straight stand is also the boom of the other stand. It simply fits into a filter boss grafted to the third stage which has its angle arrested in precisely the same way as the filter. There is no counterweight for the boom.

Pearl's snare drum stand is numbered S-900W and also has the tripod base and wedged feet. It's an adjustable basket-type stand but with an unusual angle adjustment for the drum. It is the sort of thing which can be seen on camera tripods and allows almost any position for the basket. There's a very large bolt to lock this angle once you've got it and I can't imagine it would move once properly set. As with most of Pearl's snare drum stands the rubber sheathed right angle arms are affected by a capstan nut running up a screw thread which moves those arms inwards against the drum. The height adjustment is the same as on the other stands but I would personally like to see some form of memory clamp fitted to ensure the same set up each night.

The hi hat pedal H-900 is very much the same as their old twin expansion spring model. It's a centrepull job and its springs are set in a pair of chambers outside the down-tube. It, too, has tripod legs although they've only a single strut, the ends of which have an optional spike or rubber end which can be selected by simply undoing a drumkey operated screw and flipping the end. (I'd like to see these made from hardened steel since the spike does blunt in time.) The hi hat and bass drum pedal's foot plates are identical sand blasted, two piece units with toe stops. Those springs are housed in tubes which serve as the framework for the pedal-base assembly. A pair of adjustable collars sit at the top of these tubes and it's here that the tension may be changed to make the action harder of softer. The top tube of the hi hat is now made of wider gauge tubing which is no longer swaged at the top to enable it to locate the bottom cymbal cup which is substantial and adjustable in angle. This stand does have a locking collar fitted to its downtube. Pearl's top cymbal clutch has always been pretty good. It features a large locking screw and a turned barrel with adjustable screwed washers and a pair of felts which are not too soft and not too hard. The action is very smooth and I know guys who've used this particular sort of Pearl hi hat for years day after day with no real problems.

The P-800 foot pedal has also given sterling service over the yers. It comes as a surprise to me though that Pearl supply it with such an upmarket kit as the GLX-22D50. I'd have thought they would have specified the P-900 pedal. Anyway the P-800 has twin posts, a single expansion spring, and what Pearl call fondly their 'wheel-drive-action'. This is a very large boss which is fixed to the centre of the axle and which retains the felt beater. The spring, which is of course joined to the cam shaft, has several possible positions relative to the cam. This will change the attack of the pedals' beater a little. The pedal has what I'd call a good, smooth action but without any real power behind its stroke. The whole thing clamps to the drum's hoops with an open-jaw action and locks there via a wing bolt. I keep thinking that there's a mistake in my catalogue and that it's the more upmarket 900 which is supposed to be with the set.

The only other piece of equipment left to comment upon is the double tom holder arm(s). They've been breathed on pretty heavily too, recently. They will now drop down to a much sharper angle than before which should make them more convenient for some players. They don't look quite like they used to and now have their angle locking-screw set more into the boss than before. Inside the block is what's known as a 'concealed ring action mechanism' to set the angle, or rather maintain it. All the other necessary angles are created by swivelling the tubes inside the blocks secured to the drums themselves. Cosmetically Pearl have glued black plastic discs to each side of the knuckle'.

Conclusion & appearance

The set I saw was finished in beautiful black lacquer both inside and out. It really was breathtaking. Somehow the black complemented the 'Deep Force' shells. The set is also available in wine red lacquer, walnut lacquer and natural Maple. I played both the black set and the red set and there was definitely a sound difference. Only the black sets have the colour inside and there was definitely a rounder sound to them. That's not, of course, to say that there's anything wrong with the other sets; their toms and bass drums were rich and clear too with the increased fundamental you get when you stretch the shell another couple of inches. That snare drum was bright too, and not as gongy as I'd feared. It did have a lot of attack and was quite breathy too. (Brass snare drums often have an over ring which is hard to lose.) Of course this isn't a cheap kit from Pearl but since it's so painstakingly put together I'm convinced that you're getting what you pay for.

Without denigrating anybody else's product it's still a good deal cheaper than the most expensive synthesized kit, and you can play it in a power cut!

Pearl GLX-22D50 - RRP: £1420