How long does it take a conga skin to sound good once its been wet, mounted, and dried?

I re-skinned my Valje quinto and didn't like playing it cause the sound was bad. I gave up on it and put in the closet for a couple years.

Took it out the other month and now it sounds good.

The skin I used was quality cow skin from Brazil, opague, medium heavy. I figured it had some life in it, I bought it new, soaked and mounted it. Wondered later if I had hurt it by tightening it down too soon. Wondered also if it was just too heavy for a quinto.

But now I'm matching it with my Gon Bops, and I like its voice. It fits well between my super quinto and the tumba.

So, though I have played many years I have re-skinned drums only twice and really don't know much about it.

For those of you in the know, enlighten me please.

1. What effect does time have on reskinning?

2. How long should the skin dry before tightening?

3. For the old style sound, should heavier skins be used on the quinto or on the tumba?

 

thanks agogobil ... that tells pretty much how I figured out to do it, especially the part about wrestling alligators.

so guess it is ok to tighten 'em up after they dry.

I wonder if skin is like wood and paper, where there is two ways they can come into harmony with the surrounding air. Wet wood will reach a different equilibrium percent moisture content than dry wood when exposed to the same humid air. I wonder if a drum head needs to be very dry then rewetted from the air around it.

This is probably an idiotic question, but does one need to soak a synthetic (i.e. LP) conga head or is the soaking only applicable to real "skin" heads?

Yeah ... soaking is only for skin heads ... not synthetic.

If the drum sounds bad after mounting a new head, then it's more than likely not seated properly.

I wrote an article on changing out skin drumheads, but it seems to have disappeared from the database. I'll see if I can retrieve it sometime soon.

After soaking the calfskin head, and seating it, I apply some tension to the drum. I want the skin to have some tension as it dries and becomes more tight. You don't want too much tension as this will cause the skin to split when it dries. You need to check on it as it dries throughout the day, making sure that it was seated right in the beginning, and maintaining it's proper position as it dries.

If you need to work with the head a bit, you can do so while it's on the drum. Just moisten the head as needed and munipulate the head (ie. tension). The only time you really need to soak the head is when you are creating a new seat for the skin on the drum. If you need to take the head off for some reason, be sure to position it EXACTLY like it was before. If not, then you'll need to soak it again and start over. If you don't, it won't seat, and it will sound terrible.