congaplace.com

Thanks bro.
Si, Mongo had 2 sets of these to my understanding.









Some has fitted a mule skin to the Quinto in my set, it is one of the best sounding drums I have ever played. I love these old school Meinls.

ABAKUA wrote:Some has fitted a mule skin to the Quinto in my set, it is one of the best sounding drums I have ever played. I love these old school Meinls.

Wow, really?
I always thought mule wood not match oak congas altogether well.
Here I stand corrected.

ABAKUA wrote:I love these old school Meinls.

Me too!

No good recording possible for me, so I deleted the audio.

BTW I deleted the audio because the recording sucked.
I was not happy with the sound at all, the live sound
is so much better.
I will try again.

FWIW, here is a short audio clip:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nh8w72063hcyg ... k%20AT.mp3

...

Thanks for the offer consciousnist, I really appreciate it but I'm actually not in the market right now for congas...have other priorities at the moment but thanks a million for your generous offer! Now if you could treat us with picture of the set, I'm sure the eye candy won't hurt any of us...
Thanks again!!

...

consciousnist wrote:this is our set of traditional Meinl Woodkrafts, well beaten up, makes playing and moving around somewhat painless.
they sound as one would expect from plus 30 year old oak drums, the Quinto does need a new head though.
they are only 71cm / 28" tall, whereas the walnut colored quinto is another 1.5cm smaller at 69.5cm / 27,3"



I am in love with them.

Now those look really sweet, eye candy for sure!
Meinl Woodcraft are a stunning treat.

You have written "our" set - is this the royal plural or do the congas belong to your family?
Anyway, you also seem to own a similar configuration like me,
the shorter, but older quinto and the more recent congas.
I do not care about the height, as these drums are just gorgeous.

consciousnist wrote:I would like to find out how old the pictured brown Woodkraft quinto is.

It doesn't seem to belong to the first generation Meinl Woodkrafts as it is not as tall as the red ones,
as in 69,5cm versus 72cm, it does not carry any handles nor remains, and it isn't made from Oak either,
as it appears way too light on second thought. Color ain't natural oak but maybe walnut ?

took some pictures this afternoon to share my excitement about this drum and hope that someone will
help me to identify its age and the wood it is made from.

If it is not heavy, it is most likely not oak, you are right.
My wild guess is that it is very old, perhaps late 1970s, early 1980s? Never seen that badge - what precisely does it say on it?
I suspect Roland Meinl experimented somewhat before he came out with his Woodcraft line, so you might have a rare early model.
The shape of that quinto looks very much like the overall Meinl Wodcraft design already,
but the bottom is fairly wide for a quinto I would say. At least my Woodcraft quinto has more taper at the bottom.

Anyway, if I were you, I would drop the expert at Meinl a line: norbert.saemann@meinl.de
He helped me to identify the age of my quinto (pictured above, with the handle).

...

You are most welcome

And you have got a very interesting little quinto there.

consciousnist wrote: there are no holes to be seen where that other
real Meinl sign could have been - interesting IMO.

I don´t know if the early Woodcrafts had badges at all.
In any case, that mysterious "M" sign looks like a more or less serious attempt
to create a logo that CAN be interpreted as Meinl ...

consciousnist wrote:our sets only appear to be similar at first glance, my bordeaux red drums do not got those
rubber cushions beneath the sideplates, that dates them to the early 80's is what I learned from this thread.

Right, mine are 1998 models with the black rubber.

And by the way, you have got exactly the same red set as Abakua (I mean the ones before he had accumulated more Woodcrafts )
Hey, brother from down under, how'a you? Do you enjoy your muled Meinls?

Hi consciousnist, hi Mike,

some time ago I had a mail conversation with Conga Man (who is the operator of this nice forum), when he was thinking about buying a second-hand set of Woodcrafts. At least we agreed about some significant details in order to determine the age of the congas. The younger series have their sideplates fixed with counter-sunk screws, the older series with head screws (and the youngest models have an additional rubber piece between sideplate and corpus).

In your photos I discover both variations. And the positions of the metal bands and the badges are different on the wine-red exemplars as well. Is there also a difference in skin-quality?

p.a.dogs1

...

Now this evolves into a German thread here...

p.a.dogs1 wrote: At least we agreed about some significant details in order to determine the age of the congas. The younger series have their sideplates fixed with counter-sunk screws, the older series with head screws (and the youngest models have an additional rubber piece between sideplate and corpus).

You are right on the button with the different screw models,
Meinl sideplate bolts evolved from from older head screws over to sunken screws, and the version with rubber beneath the sideplate is the latest
- well, dating back to the last production of the 1998 anniversary model. As far as I know Meinl has not produced Meinl oak congas ever since.
At least I have not come across any more recent oak Woodcraft.