Authorized Dealer
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 m
2) 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.
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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 China 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.
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