Manufacturers, brands, skins, maintenance, stands, sticks, michrophones and other accessories for congueros can be discussed into this forum ...... leave your experience or express your doubts!
Personally the design team went a bit far....overboard. Traditional band look with all of those colors ? Keep it simple natural wood color or some nice stain would of had been fine. What they need to worry about is better hardware and heads. The 3 screws on the plates is better than 2, thats a plus.
Looking at the contrast of the bands and metal work against the white section makes me think an all white set would be striking. Add trad rims and a small lottery win and I could be tempted ! But they still sit 2nd to my beloved old mismatched set of Valje's and Smithy's !!
yeah i have to say traditional rims would look better on these. there seems to be a trend to make congas in different colors and patterns so they can be turned when facing the audience to reflect what you want them to see.
A few years back Matthew Smith, per request from Giovanni, made him some congas with all these colors. Big fish always eats little fish. Matt should have pattented this design and now big fish is running with it and mass producing little fish's original concept.
Wouldn't that make it Giovanni's concept ? I'm guessing Gio loves his rainbo Matt's and wanted a set he could actually play in public without breaching his LP contract.
Gio by association and legalities can not play anything but LP in public. In the recording studio is a different story. I know he has Matthews, Skin on Skin, Junior Tirado and Timbas Ismael. He fell in love with Mongo's Vergara bongos in an occasion he was over my house.
just looks like one more market move by lp who has to come out with a new looking old product every two minutes. and i can bet: people will buy them especially if they see giovanni playing them!