Questions Answered

Actually, their not in respect to the cost of the wood. If you were buying a Curly Koa guitar it could cost upwards of $25,000. It's rarity and beauty is the reason for it's cost. The species exists naturally nowhere else on earth. Hawaii's Koa is not endangered because of our controlled cutting and replanting programs. Volcano Percussion obtains it's Koa thru salvaging left over dead trees. It is the most valuable of Hawaiian hardwoods. It was historically the material of choice for carved ocean-going canoes as well as all the Kingdoms wooden implements. Koa wood is the most prized cabinet and furniture wood in Hawaii. Highly figured Koa is only found in 10% of the trees today. This wood is sought after for use in fine furniture, musical instruments, turnings, yacht interiors and fine architectural finish materials globally. It has a exceptionally rich appearance that shames most woods next to it, displaying a deeply reflective glow when finished with oils or modern lacquers.

Biscuits are wooden splines shaped like a flattened football inserted into a matching saw cut in the edge of the stave. This provides additional support to both staves to greatly increase the bond. More can be viewed on our Conga Anatomy Page.

It's forever! Stainless Steel is 1/3 stronger than chrome plated steel. It prevents possible bending or braking of lugs, as well as it can never rust or peel. We are the only company in the world that makes mirror finished stainless steel hardware for congas and bongos. Mirror finishing intricate parts like face plates and crowns is an art. That's why you don't see it in the industry.

"Custom Traditional" hardware is all handmade stainless steel buffed to a mirror finish. "Natural Fusion" hardware is also stainless steel, except for the crown, lugs and nuts, which are chrome plated mild steel or a softer steel, like most other companies.

First of all, our drums don't need bands to hold them together. Second, the wood is too beautiful and valuable to cover up. The beer keg look isn't our style. With the technique we use to glue staves it is not neccessary, in our case it would be over-kill.

Buffalo is actually water buffalo from Asia. Bison is another name for buffalo. Cow is female, but many times used as a general name for cattle. Kid is Calf. Steer is a castrated bull and Bull is the breeding male. The last 4 are definitely BI-products of the meat industry. The water buffalo is questionable. Our conga heads are all kid, cow, steer and bull, made to order in Texas and hand picked for every drum. Bongos are usually kid or a combination of thin steer hide and kid. We don't use Water Buffalo, horse or Mule and Jackass, because it's questionable as to why these animals became available as hides. Lastly, the source of the hides is of utmost importance due to the possibility of contracting Anthrax from unprocessed or poorly processed animal hides. Our tannery is U.S. documented for meat BI-products that are tested and treated.

Lacquer is good, but it has a tendency to crack and yellow under different weather conditions. Acrylic Polymer is the finest. It flexes with temperature and humidity changes and with extreme cold, as well as being resilient and prevents abrasion. Acrylic Polymer is a urethane based product. That's why it is used as the top coat on all late modeled automobiles as well as many of the finest guitars in the world.

First of all, it improves the sound. Secondly, a bead of glue does not improve the strength of the joint, like in welding. They look better and the strengh of the biscuts and glue is all you need to keep the drum together. We go the extra step and make the inside clean.

Yes. Mango is a hardwood and our woods have quite a bit of burl and curl which increases the hardness beyond normal technical considerations. Mango?s strength and hardness is the same as ash, except it's much more valuable than ash or oak and is much more beautiful than cherry and creates equivalent sound characteristics and is lighter in weight.

What is happening to our rain forests in South America and Indonesia is a Global disaster. The cutting and burning of the forests for personal greed should be stopped. In the U.S., we'd be stopped by environmentalist's just for lathe turning logs, because 85% of the log is lost to waste. Three stave drums can be made from the same log that produces one log drum. We cannot afford to throw away this valuable resource in the name of personal desire. The aboriginal concept of hollowing logs is an excellent idea for personal use within a tribe, but it doesn't "cut it" in today's highly populated world of mass production without proper forest management and still it would be a waste of wood. Take the Japanese for instance, they now make their famous Taiko drums with staves as opposed to huge log hollowing. They call it Eco-Taiko. They are showing they are truly "Stewards of their Land". There are techniques that save interior wood in lathe turning, but they are confined to cylindrical turning to be of any benefit in savings of material.

The truth is, if your playing or practicing like your supposed to be doing, you don't need to oil the heads. The oils from your hands will do the job for you in the best way. When confronted with a used dry head, sometimes do to quality or age, we've been using a product called Brazilian Nut Dry Oil. www.naterra.com Sold at Walmart. This is one perfect oil for any skin. Made of Shea butter, Brazilian nut oil and vitamin E. It leaves no oily residue and even smells kind of sexy! If you don't care for a little sexy smelling conga drums, try looking for shea butter without fragrance. Highly recommended.

We've given up on penetrating oils long ago. Try pickup some Napa Sil-Glyde Lubricating Compound in the 4 oz. tube. The hole in the tube is perfect size to stick the tip of the bolt into about 1/2" without taking the bolt off of the drum. One application will keep you for 2 weeks playing 5 nights a week.

First, always use insulated bags. Then go to a big box store and buy Rubbermaid 40 or 50 gal. containers. Get some bubble wrap and wrap it around the bag and duck tape the container closed. Cost: $25.00 for your hard case. It'll fly or float.

Not a good one. Play sitting down or we recommend L.P. collapsable or their Futurrlite stands Their the only ones that fit all 6 V.P. drums.

You probably had Water Buffalo heads. They could also be very dry. For a thick head to have excellent sound reverberation, it is necessary that it be a naturally tight rigid hide. Meaning tuff. In the case of all thickness of skins, they must be rigid but not dry. Our skins are chosen with so much care that most of the time we only get one skin per hide side, when it's a .20 or .22. Our skins range from 30 to 75,000's thick, according to drum size and we don't bleach white, which rots the skin and dries out the oils.

It sounds as though you have had oak drums. As an extreme example, let me remind you of the fine tonality received in the past by the original Philippine Mahogany Gon Bops drums of the 60's. You can't get much lighter than that! Now, with our drums we experiment with different woods for their tonality. We've found that mango for instance, has great tonality due to it's curls in the wood. A curl is nothing but wavy grain which in essence is a knot. It increases the hardness of the wood, which in turn helps to create it's tonal values without the overall weight. Our drum average weights is 28 lbs.

By our memories, there is a distinct similarity, but not the same. The Jazz drummer Carl Allen once said, "You've got to understand the legacy that you're building upon, before you can even begin to contribute". Thank you for the complement. Our drums got their shape from the years of research we've done with different woods to come up with the sound we fine superb. Tom