GLAMOROUS GREEN GLASS GLITTER

If it is not completely obvious to you right off the proverbial bat that the above snare drum is BLUE and totally not GREEN, then please adjust the color on your computer monitor or immediately schedule an appointment with the nearest optometrist.  Yes, this freshly restored, beautiful Blue Sparkle Pearl snare drum is indeed "blue" as the nomenclature implies, but the reason it appears to not line up with the headline I have chosen is because this is only the beginning of the story I am about to relate, a riveting tale that no one is going to read or remotely care about.

Now that I have wasted time and filled up some space with a pointless opening paragraph, here is the brief anecdote that I decided to write to accompany my photographs.  This blue snare drum was just another of several.....and I do mean several...Made-in-Japan snare drums with a blue sparkle wrap that I have restored over the years.  In fact, if you knew anything about vintage Japanese drums you would definitely know that the most pervasive characteristic of them was their wrap finish.  Chances are that if you find one of these drums it's going to have a sparkle wrap of red or blue.  Those two were obviously just the most popular color choices of the time and so it stands to reason that more of those wraps survived until now.  I have found many gold sparkle drums, a few Champagne sparkles and a handful of other interesting "agates" and "pearls," but ordinarily I most often only encounter the red and blue sparkles.  It gets quite boring rather quickly to be honest.  I can't tell you how many drums I have passed up just because I seriously don't need any more reds and blues!

So when I reluctantly purchased yet another damn Blue Sparkle Pearl snare drum just so I would have something to work on, having been furloughed indefinitely from my job, I was delighted to discover the glue underneath the wrap had deteriorated to the point that the hardware was the only thing holding the wrap to the drum.

I already had concerns about the sticker residue (shown here to the left of the leftmost lug), which was probably the result of one of these dumbass antique dealers sticking a big ol' price tag directly onto the wrap.  Note to sellers: DO NOT DO THIS, you big dummies!  Now I have to figure out a way to remove the sticker and the glue residue without damaging the delicate wrap!  Not an easy task!

Besides that, there was this disturbing auction photo that clearly shows that the wrap has come loose near the Tone Control Knob.  I can see the head and rim has squeezed a portion of it away from the shell, and it is starting to crinkle and tear.

Bravely I took the risk and bought the drum anyway, hoping to get this instrument back on track by repairing the damage.  But, as I stated earlier, when I removed all the chrome hardware in preparation for cleaning, the wrap fell off.  This meant I could forget the BSP wrap altogether and start from scratch!  What an opportunity!

Naturally I would want to choose a new wrap that was more interesting and eye-catching.  Of course I'm not going to recover this drum with another blue sparkle wrap!  That would be monotonous!  No, I decided to go with something rare yet appropriate for the era.  That's why I went with Precision Drum Company's "Green Glass Glitter," although back in the day it would have been called "Green Sparkle Pearl."  The difference is GSP consists of green sparkles which produce a more subdued sparkleness, whereas the GGG finish also contains mirror sparkles in the mix which cause it to SPARKLE noticeably more.  It really POPS, unless you have a shitty digital camera from a decade or so ago that is completely incapable of taking decent photos of drums.

So there you have it.  Definitely not the most professional "re-wrap job" ever executed, but I'm happy with it.  It works.  If you could just pretend that those photos are totally awesome, that would be great, because I'm old and I'm tired and let's face it, I'm just not very good at taking pictures of drums with my god-awful camera.  I'm not going to stress out about it.  I'm done here.