Mounting Your Own Heads - I'm feeling courageous

[Supa Coopa]

Hey Mike,
I'm not sure I'm on the same page as you, but I chose and caliper my heads to 45/55mm for quinto & conga and 60 to 75mm for tumba. Soak um and wrestle with um and their what I want when finished. Flat heads will sometime actually shrink from their original unmounted dry thickness, which can be disappointing, but to come thicker? Quality helps a lot.

[Mike]

Well, too thick heads just hurt and produce not the desired sound, I think .
<<<45/55mm for quinto & conga and 60 to 75mm for tumba>>>
This is very thick, at least compared to the thickness many drum manufacturers allow for their drums (e.g. LP Classic Quinto has about 1 - 2 mm - OK that´s the water buffalo that doesn´t sound good anyway, which is why I changed it...)

You may be right, Supa Coopa, it surely depends on the quality of the head. I was happy to reduce the overtones by mounting a decent cowhide on the LP Classic, getting nice and warm tones out of the drum now.

[CongaCaja]

Hey those photos from the Volcano Percussion site are great. Thanks for sharing!

cjk

[Supa Coopa]

:cool: Sorry about my error Mike. I was talking in thousands. 45 to 55,000 is 1.5mm. 60 to 75,000 is 1.75mm. If you go below 45 on your quinto, you can get more crack in your slap, but expect a ring. With cowhide it can dissipate with use, at least on a wooden drum. Of course on the other end of the spectrum, if you have too thick a head, the sound is flattened. Some conguero's use only thick heads, but they're heavy handed and actually reshaping the thickness of the head by repeated playing and with the oils in their hands.