Thank you kind Sir! I'm delighted you like it!
Yes Bo, I'm 6'3" and long arms, so reach isn't a problem. The problem with my 32" Slingerland and I daresay my 28" Leedy too (but to a lesser degree) is getting the bass drum beater to hit the sweet center spot of the drum. Not an impossibility on the 28", but certainly on the 32". I've tried everything imaginable...from welding an extension on to the beater rod equipped with a heavy 60's solid wood ball beater (OUCH! ...My shin! ) witch I used for awhile until I got tired of beating myself to death with it.....made another attempt to offset the pedal foot board at an impossibly improbable angle, and a still further attempt to elevate the pedal itself! No go. So I use it as is and heavily mic the batter AND reso heads. The 28" isn't too bad, but the beater still doesn't hit perfect dead center. My 26" Ludwig is perfect.
Although our drumming brethren used 28" bass drums from the the early 20's on; firstly because they were readily available in a marching drum configuration and because there was no drum micing per se; and secondly because there was a need in the Big Band and Jazz era to hear that THUMP, it was, and still is, impractical to use anything larger than a 28" due to the engineering limitations of both the bass drum pedal and the human anatomy. Triggers would probably work, but I'm a purist at heart.
John probably figured that out straight away and decided that the 26" was about the limit he would go to stay in the lower sound wave envelope to achieve what he was looking for, though I suspect that he might have initially experimented with larger size bass drums to come to this conclusion. One can readily see, historically, that his mindset WAS steeped in the spirit of innovation, hence his collaborative efforts with the Ludwig Vistalites and Steel kits. He certainly was a brilliant innovator with an eye towards the future of drumming.
And who among us hasn't experimented with our kits, and by extension, our sound?
RIP JB