Dave, you obviously are obsessed with "teaching" us guys something. So maybe I can teach you something.
1. Anyone and everyone has the exact same opportunity and choices to buy whichever combo they want, not just the stadium touring guys.
2. If you want a colour stained drum, you are then limited to a select few wood choices. You have to start with a light wood, such as Birch, Poplar or Maple. You see, you cannot colour a dark wood back to a lighter shade. So if you are wanting the sound of darker wood, such as Walnut, Rosewood, Bubinga, then you are stuck with a deep brown or if you want to stain it, you will have a charcoal or black.
3. There are plenty of touring pro's who use "brown" stave drums. The stave construction is not heard with your eyes. They sound unique, far different, I will say superior, to a ply shelled snare. More tone, more body, more character. And no, the major manufacturers usually do not make stave shells, they are too time consuming and no has automated the hand build process yet. Gretsch, and maybe a couple others have started offering some stave shells in order to grab up that piece of the market, but from what I can tell, they get some little shop in the Phillipines to do the wood work and the masses can now have a factory direct import.
4. Without going through my library, I build plenty of variety in my drums, this one just so happens to be a dark walnut wood, which I accented with a light shade of Olive Ash Burl inlay to offset the dark brown. So if you really believe you have to convince me of something, because, hmmmm, I have only been building and playing drums a couple months now, here is one of my kits with and assortment of drums most of which I have built.
And if you look down at the far right, just happens to be a white washed Cherry stave kit. You can see the grain through the wood. I actually got a lot of negative comments because I covered up the nice cherrywood.