Do I Like Water Buffalo Heads?

[Bachikaze]

I've had this question for a long time, but I've never asked it because I deal with animal skin drums all the time (cow, elk, goat, deer, horse), and I'm embarrassed I don't know the answer.

I have read here about Thai water buffalo and thick steer hide. I guess LP puts water buffalo on a lot of their drums, but I'm not sure i can identify it.

There is a kind of hide LP uses that is translucent, even sometimes transparent, and tending towards amber in color. The hide is hard, not unlike fiberglass.

Is this water buffalo?

Mostly, water buffalo is poorly rated in these forums in favor of steer and mule. I have Bauer congas with cowhide heads that everyone loves. They have a rich, mellow sound that seems to be very popular. However, I like the crisp sound of the LP translucent heads—so much so that I am currently trying to mount one on my middle Bauer conga. This material brings out nice overtones and has character. Slaps are easy, and each different hand position has a more distinct sound than on my Bauers.

Am I alone in my preference?

Bachikaze

[Mike]

Bachikaze,
You might feel a bit alone indeed, as many on this forum tend to abscond from water buffalo heads if possible.
Even if this a matter of personal taste, there are also good reasons. Let me explain to you why.

I have also ditched most of my water buffaloes - but not the thicker ones.

So what it boils down to is this: I want medium to thick skins, because on quality congas,
they produce the warm and partly dry and mellow sound I am after.
LP Water buffalo skins tend to be rather thin. Yes, as you say "This material brings out nice overtones and has character."
Some do not like the ringing, however, and to eliminate overtones, a thicker skin is preferred.
" Slaps are easy" - well, actually not really! It depends on your technique as well as the tuning too.

I have taken the effort to take some pictures of different skins.
You will notice that cow or steer skin can have optical similarities to water buffalo hides,
but the structural and tonal differences are tremendous.
By taking a look from underneath, you can see various degrees of thickness and also richness in texture.

Let us start with an LP Water buffalo, very thin:

Yes, they are translucent - due to them being only 1-2mm thick!. I replaced my LP Classic quinto with a thick German cow skin (are not all cows thick? ) and you will notice the difference:

[Mike]

And here is the same cow skin from underneath

The same goes for a rarity I could get hold of years ago: Cuban cow or steer hide! I mounted it onto a cheap conga and it was a fantastically sounding instrument after wards:

Note the density when seen from below:

Now that skin really made a difference!
It´s 20 years old and still rocks...

[Mike]

Last but not least a different animal: mule skin - less overtones, super-crisp slaps and a silky feel!

seen from underneath:

Mule skin is a kind of its own, a better league - I enjoy that one over the water buffalo on my LP Gio quinto very much.
BTW I recyled the LP handpicked water buffalo skin of that drum as the hembra of this bongó (macho is mule skin - sic!):

SUPERCUSSION w beautiful skins.JPG (8.31 KiB) Viewed 13331 times

There the water buffalo skin feels much better.

Hope you enjoyed the pics. Could I convince you ?
No, just kiddin´, let´s have this straight: Far from wanting to patronize, I just wanted you to get an idea of what beautiful other skins are walking around..

Take care

Mike

[Mike]

P.S.: I do not own any calf skin: Does anybody feel like sharing a nice picture with calf skin with us?

And on a final note: Here is a rather thick water buffalo skin on the old Afro conga I have recently purchased:

It ain´t that bad at all...

Now skinny Mike has said enuff...

[Thebreeze]

I just want to add one thing to Mike's information about the TRANSLUCENT skins. They can be TRANSLUCENT and still be
thick. My Rawhide source that I posted on the "Skin Supplier List" thread supplies me with skins that are mostly of the Translucent variety and a few that are more of a solid color.These are U.S.A. Cowhides. I like their skins alot and being that they are translucent does not bother me in the least because I like to lean towards thicker skins for my quinto and conga drums and so I always pick out nice thick ones. It's true about LP, their translucent skins are on the thin side, but they will put out some thicker ones on their Tumbas and those skins to me are decent to have for a variety of reasons like MIke using one one his Hembra bongo shell. I have posted three pictures, one of a batch of skins from my source that I just
cut up, another with a skin laying over a conga ready for mounting, and the third with the skin mounted on the conga. You can see it is translucent, but make no mistake, it is nice and thick, maybe 1/8" . MIke,,,, that was a lot of great info you put out. I always come away learning something, and your post was very informational. Thanks .

Will.

[Bachikaze]

Thank you, Mike, for the photo essay. It's much appreciated. As I said in my first post, I have experience with many kinds of skin, but not water buffalo or mule.

Are all LPs sold with water buffalo? The head I put on my conga is stamped with "LP 265A".

The photos below are of a Bauer head from my conga. It's milkier than any of those in your photos. The quinto head is completely opaque. I've heard they're cow.

These heads seem to have qualities that are appreciated on the CongaBoard, but I find them rather dull. It could be the tuning. My friend had LP Classics with bright overtones I seem to like.

[Mike]

You can see it is translucent, but make no mistake, it is nice and thick, maybe 1/8" .

Will. [/quote]
Yes, the bottom line is that translucent or not does not mean all that much.

MIke, that was a lot of great info you put out. I always come away learning something, and your post was very informational. Thanks .

Thank you, Mike, for the photo essay. It's much appreciated. As I said in my first post, I have experience with many kinds of skin, but not water buffalo or mule.

It was my very pleasure, Will and Bachikaze!

And I think yes, all LP heads are water buffalo these days, be it bongo or conga heads.

BTW nice pics of yours as well - I am sure that this Bauer conga as well as such a great Afro conga (Will, again: brother in conga!) surely sound great. Bauer is known to have good cow skins. Wow, what a splendid array of skins, WIll

Best wishes, my blessed congueros!

Mike

@ everybody: hey, let´s keep it a photo essay: We want more photos of decent skins!

[bongosnotbombs]

The macho on this bongo is Kip skin, which has been referred to as calf skin or even foetal calf skin.
It is my preferred skin for bongo machos over all other skin types.

It is thin and smooth, I don't think it is suitable for congas, and I can't remember hearing of it used
on congas, just for bongo macho and hembras. I think I have heard of kip being used on bata drums.

The hembra on these bongos is calf. The unmounted skin is also Kip. The macho used to be much more
clear, or translucent, but I play this drum a lot and the skin is changing, you can see right where my fingers
hit the head.

I have had several very good skins that are translucent and cow, one on my Gon Bops conga from Will is excellent. I also
have great skins on my other congas which are not translucent at all. It has been a while since I have played on
water buffalo, I remember not appreciating the texture.

[taikonoatama]

The macho on this bongo is Kip skin, which has been referred to as calf skin

Just so everyone is clear, the leather industry differentiates calf, kip and cow along the following:

Calf - A very young and small cow
Kip - Older, bigger than calf but not fully grown - think young teen-aged cow
Cow - Fully grown

Mind you, people who sell them might flip the terms around and call calf "kip" and kip "calf," possibly being unaware that they're different, or how they're different.

[Mike]

Thanks for the language update, Taikonoatama!

Kip skin...It is thin and smooth, I don't think it is suitable for congas, and I can't remember hearing of it used on congas, just for bongo macho and hembras. I think I have heard of kip being used on bata drums.

Alright, but it can´t be the thickness alone, since I have got an East African ngoma with a cow hide that is only about 1mm thick only. It can withstand fierce stick drumming, so it must be the overall texture which makes it durable.

I have had several very good skins that are translucent and cow, one on my Gon Bops conga from Will is excellent. I also have great skins on my other congas which are not translucent at all.

Translucent or not, this does not really seem to mean much, agreed.
Well in fact light can shine through most skins.

As to colour:
Meinl uses a lot of near to snow-white skins on the Mongo Santamaria model, for example.
They call that "True Skin". It is very smooth, but not really to my liking.

Hence the question: What does the bleaching process do to the skin?

[Mike]

Just to complete matters:
Here is a closer pic of my Tanzanian ngoma - I could watch the building process. The shell is made from metal (old oil barrel),
the cow was killed - the smell persisted quite a while when the drum was new...

Drum tuning happened at the fire.
The cow skin - unshaven - still feels very good, it is appr. 1mm thin. Here is another pic:

Cheers
-Mike

[bongosnotbombs]

Thanks for the language update, Taikonoatama!

Kip skin...It is thin and smooth, I don't think it is suitable for congas, and I can't remember hearing of it used on congas, just for bongo macho and hembras. I think I have heard of kip being used on bata drums.

Alright, but it can´t be the thickness alone, since I have got an East African ngoma with a cow hide that is only about 1mm thick only. It can withstand fierce stick drumming, so it must be the overall texture which makes it durable.
Here is a picture. I also own one of those. The drummer is in the background:

The attachment Bagamoyo Players.jpg is no longer available

As to colour:
Meinl uses a lot of near to snow-white skins on the Mongo Santamaria model, for example.
They call that "True Skin". It is very smooth, but not really to my liking.

Hence the question: What does the bleaching process do to the skin?

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. I didn't mean to sound like
I know empirically that kip or calf is not good for congas, I don't know it might be good, but instinctively I would never put what I know as kip on a conga, mainly
from my experience with thinner skins and such. Who knows, calves are smaller maybe you just can't get some big and even enough? I think kip is best on a macho
because of how high you can tune it, it can work on a hembra as well. I think the youth of the cow used in kip makes the skin more elastic and easier to make really
tight. The only conga I know that would want to be as tight might be a quinto.

As far as bleached skins go, my Resolution bongos came with slightly bleached skins, at first I was kind of skeptical of the processed skins, but once I got to
get to know these drums better I have no desire to change them at all. I wouldn't go out of my way to buy bleached skins, but I really enjoy the sound of the
ones I have. A friend of mine has a Matador tumba with a bleached after market skin and that drum sounds pretty good to me too.

Ralph from Resolution said he uses the skins mainly for appearance, but don't get me wrong he is a stickler for sound. He reskinned my conga
set because he did not like the sound of the first skins he put on them.

[akdom]

Hi there
I tried a water buffalo head once.... It didn't fit with the rest of my body.....

More seriously, very nice thread, and very instructive.

Just to give you my point of view, I am a fierce aficionado of very thick cow skins. Much less (no) overtone and very warm sound.


B

[Bachikaze]

Excellent question (about bleaching), which I've been wrestling with for a long time. I've researched for years and the best answer I have come up with is that bleaching damages the skin, but not severely. However, I never bleach my skins on any drum.

I have used many hides called "cowskin". Some are completely opaque, while others are like a sheet of amber, where you can practically see through them. Normally, the more opaque they are, the softer they are. Conversely, I've had transparent hide that was so hard, hitting them with a drumstick made them sound like hard, thick plastic. The softest "cowhide" I've ever had was very white. I assume it was heavily bleached. This white hide in no way resembled the hard, translucent stuff.

So far, it seems to me that bleach breaks down fibers and softens the hide overall. Since I normally make bass drums I hit with massive sticks—like taiko drums—and this is not desirable. However, for a hand drum, it may have possibilities.

The hardest, most transparent hides are generally the cheapest, though they are selected for drums. For stick drums, they can sound pretty bad, but they might work well for congas.

Here's my website about drum making.
http://members.cox.net/drum2/ikigala1.htm

And another about hides, though I need to update it and improve it (for instance, calf is not weak).
http://www.gorogoro.info/rawhide.htm