I couldn't find anywhere this has been talked about. If I put a bunch of wires together, that came from older drums, there seems to be very little consistency as to length. You would think that this would be fairly cut and dried but a lot of wires are over an inch short of stretching the full width of the head. Obviously , there needs to be some room for the cord or strap to comfortably come over the snare bed and the endplate needs to not go too much past the point where the head begins to dip into the snarebed but some wires are so short that the snare bed seems pretty much useless.
Some examples; Premier 13 1/16, John Grey 13 1/2,Gretsch 13, Dixon 13 1/4, Ludwig 13 3/16, 13 5/16,Tromsa 13,Sonor 12 7/8, 12 9/16, Rogers( and stated clearly on the package) no. 4457 20 strand for 14" drum 12 7/8.
It does seem that , even given differences in each drum shell and snarebed, that since these are from 14" drums , it would be wise to maximize the wire/head contact; given that every company that made parallel drop snare drums catalogued those as their flagship drum, at the time they were made.