sfmill
Senior Member
Last week I found a Tama Starphonic 40th Anniversary Steel on our country's equivalent of Craigslist.
After playing around with it this week I fell absolutely in love with it.
It has a 5mm cast steel shell with integrated reinforcement rings (which makes it even thicker than the Bell Brass and Lars Ulrich Signature) and from everything I could find out there were only 40 of them built back in 2014. Apart from that I could not find any real info on it, what was the motivation behind the drum to make it so thick, why it's a Starphonic and not a "classic" model like the other 40th Anniversary reissues and so on... and also, why doesn't Tama have anything comparable anymore in their lineup? They at least kept a variation of the Bell Brass over the years (the current one being a Starphonic), but they never had a regular thick steel snare apart from the Lars Ulrich Signature.
I would be absolutely glad if someone could shed some more light on this drum and the story behind it, maybe @singleflammedmill as I can see you have the same snare in your collection?
There are two model numbers of the same drum.
The PTS146XL is the 40th Anniversary model and came with a case and a certificate of authenticity.
The PTS146 is a limited edition sold mostly in Europe.
The integrated reinforcement rings are 5mm but the middle of the shell is 3mm.
Tama did the same thing with the Bell Brass, there are a 40th Anniversary and a limited edition model (BB156XL & BB156).