Let me introduce you to my little friend: a Star made U.S. Mercury single tension snare drum. You won’t see many of these out in the wild, so here’s your chance to get a glimpse of a very rare entry-level snare by Star, and it has all its original parts!
The shell of this guy is a standard 3-ply Luan with reinforcement rings, which was standard for Star through most of the 60’s. The shell is a standard 14” by 5.4” deep, weighing in at mere 15.8 ounces (including wrap and badge). There is a stamp on the inside: “LS” inside of a diamond, (its meaning is unknown). It was a standard practice for Star to reinforce the shell at the strainer and back plate with an extra piece of Luan on their 3-ply snares. The bearing edges are very rounded (another factory standard).
Instead of lugs it has six tension rod guides that evenly separate the tension rods. The styling is similar to what Slingerland and Ludwig used decades before. The tension rods are 5.25” long and feed into standard swivel nuts that lock into the hoop clips.
For hoops it has the old school un-flanged stick-chopper type, which are held down with hoop clips.
The strainer is Star’s standard 930 (Zoomatic copy) and a 931 back plate. Both are the most common for Star made drums.
As for the badge, it’s part of Star’s “World’s Supreme Quality” family. Star did have a couple different badges for the brand, but this one seems to be the most common. The U.S. Mercury brand, at different points, actually imported drums from all five of the stencil drum suppliers: Gracy, Hoshino, Pearl, Sakae, & Star.
The heads appear to be factory and are in really good condition. The batter head is the equivalent to a coated Remo Diplomat, the snare side head would be the equivalent to a Diplomat snare side, The only marking on the head is the “14” on the side. The rim of the heads are metal, likely aluminum, which are painted over during the coating process. Note that the bottom head is also lightly coated on the inside.
The 16 strand snare wires also appear to be the original, with the “Made In Japan” marking on them.
The wrap is what Star called “Silver Sparkle Pearl”. It is what I would call white sparkle because so much of the white background shows through. It does have a little yellowing giving it a Champaign Sparkle appearance, but it’s held up nicely for being about 60 years old.
This drum doesn’t appear in any of the Star catalogs that I have found, so accurately dating it is impossible, but based on the shell it is 60’s. Coming in at only 3 lbs.13.4 ounces it has to be the lightest full size snare drums in my collection. Single tension drums are traditionally difficult to get a great sound out of, so rather than trying to wrestle with it, I’ll treat it as a piece of MIJ drum history that I have the privilege to document.