Pearl 5" x 14" Snare (B4514 Custom Deluxe Chrome-Over-Brass)

Stewart Copeland had been playing a Pearl 5"x14" snare as his main snare for most of his career. He got two Pearl snares in Summer 1979 - one a chrome over bass (the one described here) and one chrome over steel.

It wasn't until the Synchronicity tour in 1983 that Stewart had settled on the Chrome-over-brass snare, when sound engineer Kim Turner chose it as "the one", with more crack and larger decibel range. Jeff Seitz believes that both snares were used interchangeably both live and in recording until that point.

The snares had the original Pearl flanged hoops, but Stewart broke them and Jeff Seitz replaced them with TAMA die-cast hoops, resulting in what was technically a hybrid snare.

This snare was the basis of the TAMA SC145 Stewart Copeland Signature snare, which Stewart himself played on The Police's reunion tour from 2007-2008.

Stewart Copeland quotes on the snare
"I don’t know where [the Pearl Snare] came from. And neither does Jeff Seitz, who’s been my tech through the whole time. We don’t know where it came from. But [the signature model] took a lot of different prototypes to nail the sound of that one. And I really think they got there. And it’s a hit drum. A couple times that I’ve checked into a studio, they’ll have a Ludwig Black Beauty, and then they have one of my drums in there too. It fulfills a specific, distinctive function, which is that high crack. If you want that high crack, “Let’s get that old Stewart drum out.”"

Stewart on the Pearl: "The Pearl (snare) drum was a hybrid. It’s not a Pearl drum really, because it has different hoops on it. God knows where those hoops came from. And they’re mismatched. That was the combination! In fact, we got neurotic about “the drum” and “the snare.” And after playing all the records with it and playing shows around the world, it was always that snare."