Do I Like Water Buffalo Heads?

[No.2-1820]

I like the bleached skins, but not overly bleached, the skins I've had from Ralph always retain some of the yellowish, creamy colors which shows me that they have been lightly bleached, they seems to have a dryer sound to me, perhaps because they have lost some of the natural oils. I alternate between a kip (from Fat conga who supply beauties) and a bleach cow from ralph on my Timba bongo macho, when you get used to them (it seems to require more focused technic than the mule on my other set) I find they produce very authentic old school tones, it seems to me from photographs that many of the old masters used thicker and often white skins on their bongo, Jose Manguel, Jack Costanza etc. You also see the white heads on many congas, including Mongo and Ray Barretto etc. I've heard one drawback is they don't last as long but hey, it's all about the tones !

Hey BNB, what's your friends name ? I sold a lovely old matador to a bay area local that was topped with a great sounding bleached skin.

Barrie

[bongosnotbombs]

You know just for the record, I don't really know what the process we call "bleach"
actually is. I doubt they are soaking these skins in giant vats of Clorox if you get my drift.

I think it's just a process to make the skins a nice uniform white color, but I don't know how it is done.

Barrie, I'm talking about my friend Dave from the east bay, a brown matador with a white skin,traditional rim, is it your drum?
It's a nice one for sure, gets played a lot, looks and sounds great. He is one of Carlos Aldama's students. I see that drum a lot.

[No.2-1820]

I'm not 100% sure of his name but it was brown, trad rims etc, an older drum but in beautiful shape, I'll bet that's the one, a young guy in his twenties I believe,from Oakland or Berkeley, the skin was new when I sold the drum and already sounded nice, I told him it would break in nice, sounds like it did. Tell him I said hi if you see him.

B

[Mike]

I don't really know how a ngoma is played, but just because a skin is good for sticks doesn't mean it is good for hands.

BnB, I thought so, because the impact zone is smaller with a stick - and the Tanzanian drummers would cut their sticks which are half an inch thick directly from a tree...!
The ngoma I took a picture of can be played either by hand or by stick. When you play it by hand you have to be a bit careful about the edge. You play only open tones, so that is not really a problem.

A friend of mine has a Matador tumba with a bleached after market skin and that drum sounds pretty good to me too.

Yes, I have seen or rather heard many beauties of that kind, so to bleach or not to bleach is probably not so much the question
But then, many experts claim that the more you process a rawhide chemically, the more it loses its natural oils which prevent its drying out.
There simply must be a difference - Is there anybody to enlighten us?

Mike

[bongosnotbombs]

But then, many experts claim that the more you process a rawhide chemically, the more it loses it snatural oils which prevent its drying out.
There simply must be a difference - Is there anybody to enlighten us?

Mike

Well there is always Manteca de Corojo and Shea butter to treat skins with...

[Mike]

Alright, BnB, but I rather use oil & butter for cooking
Just a joke, of course you can prevent cracks in the skin by oiling it every now and then
- even if I do not do this very often.

I just wondered if the sound per se is different when your conga has a white skin.

This question might be stupid, but is there anything like a naturally white cattle (cow or steer) skin
or do they naturally come with a lightly brownish colour?

[buckoh]

I have always liked the sound of bleached heads. I would like to try to bleach a head, since I have part of a steerhide left. Anybody got any suggestions? I have several types bleaches that I use on furniture. I have lots of scraps that I can experiment on. Buck

[Mike]

Just a question:
Do you think this is bleached WATER BUFFALO head?

The skin is VERY thick (about 4.5mm) - but it sounds good!

Edit: BTW This is a Meinl Livesound conga from the early 1990s - big booming sound!

[taikonoatama]

This question might be stupid, but is there anything like a naturally white cattle (cow or steer) skin
or do they naturally come with a lightly brownish colour?

Hmmm...

Related to this, I've put white goat skins on djembes. Many others here have experience with this as well, and an interesting thing is that the hair color doesn't necessarily correlate to the skin color. You generally start with a whole animal skin with the hair still on it and shave it after mounting it, and in some cases if there's white hair the skin is also almost white, and in other cases the hair is white but the skin is brown. Maybe it has something to do with the type of goat, though the ones I've used have all been from West Africa.

Never seen or heard of a naturally white cow skin, but this gets me wondering. Maybe a cow with white hair might have lighter or even white skin? I doubt it, but can't say for sure. Do black Angus cows have super dark skin? Isn't that what Isla and maybe Volcano use?

[No.2-1820]

I would hazard a guess that is a lightly bleached cow or steer on the meinl, it looks too smooth to be WB but it's just a stab you can't tell much from a photo.

B

[Mike]

I would hazard a guess that is a lightly bleached cow or steer on the meinl, it looks too smooth to be WB but it's just a stab you can't tell much from a photo.

B

Thanks No.2,
I would have also guessed at cow/steer due to the fact that in the 1990s at least, Meinl still had a strong favour of rather thick cow skins on most of their medium range congas.
The only thing that made me wonder was the "hair structure": You can detect some remnants of hair on the surface of the skin - and that is something which I have often seen with water buffalo. But then, perhaps the head was not shaven too thoroughly.

Thanks anyway

Mike

[Mike]

Just FYI: This is a BAUER cow skin - looks awesome, doesn´t it?

I like unbleached cow skins very much! They have a good resonance, but not too many overtones.
At least the Bauer congas are renowned for a rather dry sound.

[Mike]

And here is something very special:

2 conga mule skins I am getting the next days from El Greco, el hombre sincero, the one and only
Greek supplier of mule skins all of Europe .
They look very fine, judging from the pics I think.

I am pretty sure they will upgrade my water buffaloed Matador and Afro Elite conga to a cosmic dimension

[Congadelica]

Hey Mike , those look quality mule skins . how thick are they does Elgreco have a range of thin and thicker skins?
Also how much did you pay ?? so many quetiones , but if you dont ask

Marco

[Mike]

El Greco´s skins are quality for sure! Mine are rather thick (wanted them to be, but he has also got thinner ones)

Here are his sizes viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4020&hilit=el+greco+mule

and as to the prices you should contact El Greco i guess.