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Pearl Musical Instrument Company simply known as Pearl, is a multinational corporation based in Japan with a wide range of products, predominantly percussion instruments. Pearl was founded by Katsumi Yanagisawa -who began manufacturing music stands in Sumida, Tokyo- on April 2, 1946. In 1950, Yanagisawa shifted his focus to the manufacturing of drums and named his company "Pearl Industry, Ltd." By 1953, the company's name had been changed to "Pearl Musical Instrument Company," and manufacturing had expanded to include drum kits, marching drums, timpani, Latin percussion instruments, cymbals, stands, and accessories. Yanagisawa's eldest son, Mitsuo, joined Pearl in 1957 and formed a division to export Pearl products worldwide. To meet increasing worldwide demand for drum kits following the advent of rock and roll music, in 1961 Pearl built a 15,000 sq ft (1,400 m2) factory in Chiba, Japan to produce inexpensive drum kits that bore the brand names of more than thirty distributors such as Maxwin, CB-700, Stewart, Werco, Ideal, Crest, Revelle, Revere, Lyra, Majestic, Whitehall, Apollo, Toreador, Roxy, and Coronet.
In 1966, Pearl introduced its first professional drum kit, the "President Series". For a time in the early 1970s, Pearl was distributed in the U.S. by Norlin, the parent company of Gibson guitars at the time. Today, Pearl's Taiwanese operation encompasses five factories whose output supplies nearly the entire worldwide market for Pearl products. The original Chiba factory now caters to the domestic Japanese market, producing drum kits, marching drums, timpani, and symphonic chimes. Adams Musical Instruments are sold in the U.S. through Pearl dealers, Hughes and Kettner guitar and bass amplifiers are distributed through Pearl's main warehouse in Nashville, Tennessee and Sabian cymbals are distributed in Japan through Pearl dealers.
Pearl created several drum products, such as shells in the 1970s that were made of wood with a fiber-glass lining. There was also a shell made of a composite called "Phenolic." Additionally, Pearl combined roto-toms and these Phenolic shells to create the Vari-Pitch line of drums. Other early innovations included shells that were slightly undersized, so that the drum head would extend over the edges, much like a gong drum. Pearl manufactured seamless, extruded acrylic shells that were different from the tabbed-and-seamed Vistalite shells used by Ludwig. Pearl also developed the hinged tube tom-arm, a design widely copied by many other drum manufacturers.
Pearl Percussion has long been involved with marching percussion instruments. Their first appearance in the world of drum corps was in 1981 with the Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps who marched with a complete battery set of Pearl marching drums that year. Pearl's "FFX" free-floating marching snare, and Championship Series deep cut tenor drums feature distinctive volume and clarity that became one of the most frequently featured marching drums utilized by drum and bugle corps and related marching-arts ensembles. Pearl developed the "free-floating" design in the 1990s.