It’s rare to find a complete (or nearly complete) snare kit with the box, especially from the Hoshino Kougyou factory, so when this popped up I had to snatch it up (for its historical relevance of course). The above picture is a digital reconstruction of the box it came with, which was torn and water damaged, but the bulk of it was intact. Note that “PAIR” is “RAIR”.

The actual drum does bear a solid resemblance to the artwork on the box. The only things missing from my kit were the brushes and the cymbal post, which was easy to fabricate.

Starting with the snare drum, the shell is a 3-ply Luan with re-enforcement rings. The wrap is a beautiful “Gold Sparkle” according to the box. This wrap is more brilliant than older Hoshino and most other MIJ sparkle wraps. It was in this era that Hoshino either changed the wrap making process or changed the company that made their wraps. This new manufacturing process impacted Gold, Red, Silver, and Blue wraps and possibly others as well. I believe this type wrap is a colored glitter overlaid in clear, as opposed to a silver glitter overlaid in a transparent color.

The hardware on this snare is prototypical Hoshino with the Gretsch-styled Micro-sensitive strainer, a standard Hoshino butt-plate, triple flange hoops, a standard muffler, and the six lugs are the Slingerland Beavertail-styled type. The unique part of these lugs is that they are spring-less, using simple inserts.

The drum still had the original unbranded heads which are significantly more shallow (only 0.30” deep) with he aluminum hoops being most of that depth at 0.19”. To compare, a standard Remo head is about 0.70” deep. The batter head is coated and the snare side head is coated on the inside. The original snare wires are 16-strand with the “MADE IN JAPAN” on one end.

Having these accessories directly associated with Hoshino helps us identify future finds. The snare stand is a flat base with a round center where the snare arms come out. The drum key and pouch are both unique in style, with the pouch having the eyelet on the opposite side of Star’s yellow pouch. There is absolutely nothing unique about the 10” cymbal, it was likely sourced from the same place as other manufacturers. The cymbal arm has a different design from the one Pearl used in that era. Note that most companies just used a flat based cymbal stand or like Star, just mounted it to the drum itself. The kit also contained completely intact wood-tip drumsticks with “JAPAN” stamped in blue on the butt end.

As always, one of my favorite parts is the Badge, which in this case a pretty rare one. In all of my searches I could not find a source for the Alex brand, in fact the only thing I could find was that all of my sightings of the brand yielded a gold sparkle Hoshino snare.

I was able to find this exact same set up in an Eatons catalog from 1973. Note that on one side of my box was the handwritten price of $39.95, so this at least gives me a general year that it was sold. My drum would have leaned more to the late 60’s in manufacturing based on the 3-ply shell. By 1973 Hoshino Luan shells were 9-Ply.