Full-bodied tone, with a higher overall pitch response than traditional maple, at 3mm thick, our exclusive precision-milled Philharmonic Cast Aluminum shell snare drum is one of the thickest metal drums you’ll find. Aluminum is a relatively soft metal and provides the warm, round, full-bodied resonance of a wood shell snare. However, it also possesses the snap, volume, and projection provided by a metal snare. No other concert snare drum can offer this perfect compromise between wood and metal. Since the Philharmonic PHA is a milled cast aluminum shell, its bearing edges are precision-cut and perfect every time.

The PHP1325/N Philharmonic Pancake Snare adds a new range of ultra-quiet response and crystal clear tone to the Pearl Philharmonic line.

Contemporary repertoire demands and performance environments often push instrument design and innovation at Pearl. Tom Freer, of the Cleveland Orchestra, collaborated with Pearl designers to create the new 13” x 2.5“ Philharmonic Pancake snare drum to meet the growing demand for a solo and audition drum that could be “whisper-quiet” and professional-grade for years of use. Maximum sensitivity was needed in the smallest possible format.

The musical challenges presented were met with a variety of solutions affecting nearly every aspect of the drum's design. First, an extremely compact 13” x 2.5” 8-ply Maple Shell was required for whisper-quiet tone and maximum sensitivity. This unique shell design led to the creation of a new single-point lug system specifically for the Philharmonic Pancake. Next, special modifications were made to Pearl's renowned Triad Silent Strainer, allowing the snare assemblies to be correctly positioned and tensioned against the bottom head while still maintaining the adjustability of the strainer. In addition, new snare assemblies were developed using light gauge music wire in a proprietary graduated tensioning system, altogether creating that signature Pearl out-of-the-box performance quality.

The Philharmonic PHM snare drum is painstakingly hand-formed from a single ply of fully aged prime Maple to achieve the pinnacle of concert snare drum attack, response, dynamics and tonal color in one instrument.