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The Pearl Reference Redline drums are breathtaking, due to their black-on-black or white-on-white design infused with just a touch of red due to the specially designed hardware gaskets. The rubber gaskets used to isolate the shells from the drum hardware have been infused with red dye, creating a striking splash of color. This visual innovation can only be found on these limited edition kits.
The mission behind Pearl Reference Series drums is to produce a complete set of individually engineered, incredible sounding drums.
Each shell in the Reference Series is composed of a blend of woods totaling an incredible 20 plies. This extra thick drum shell ensures that no energy is lost through shell vibration and all energy is focused on moving sound waves.
In 1999, Pearl began its most ambitious undertaking, The Masterworks Series, the world's first truly custom drums. Designed for the player by the player. Every aspect of the manufacturing process was custom made, from the number of wood plies, to the wood selection, to the final finish. Over the last five years, through arduous listening tests, Masterworks taught Pearl drum makers a great deal about drums and what makes the perfect shell.
To fully understand the Reference Series you must understand that the desired tonal characteristics of a 10" tom are completely different than that of a 22" bass drum. Thus to use the same material in both drums would result in a compromise.
Reference Series drums use a combination of task-specific bearing edges and three time-proven woods: birch, maple, and African mahogany. Using maple as a sole material has long been the traditional choice for shells and for good reason. Maple provides smooth, well-balanced tone that is perfect for a 12" tom. Subsequently, all Reference Series 12" toms are composed of six plies of maple; this is the only single wood shell in the series. And for maximum response, all 13" diameter and smaller toms have a rounded 45° bearing edge, and a more focused area for head-to-shell contact to boost mid- to higher-range frequencies.
Beginning with Pearl's 13" tom and larger, mahogany is added to the inner plies to increase the lower frequencies and accentuate the warmth of the maple. The 14"-diameter toms and larger begin using Pearl's fully-rounded bearing edge for even more shell contact for a boost in mid- to low- range frequencies. As the sizes of the bass drums increase, so do the amounts of mahogany. Pearl's 22" Reference bass drums incorporate an amazing six inner plies of mahogany surrounded by two outer plies of maple for an ultimate kick drum sound.
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