Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)After experimenting with a number of doumbek heads for my Ghawaret El Fan drum, I settled on the Remo SKYNDEEP, primarily for the tonal quality. It produces solid and non-flabby dums, crisp teks, and nice, sharp pops. The head is well made: the metal ring is substantial, flat, uniform, and perfectly circular, and the membrane is uniformly tensioned and shaped all around the circumference. A lot of other heads have very poor quality metal rings with severe warps, and puckered and irregular membranes -- even heads that sometimes come on otherwise good drums.
So how does SKYNDEEP compare to Fiberskyn or clear/blue plastic? This head seems brighter and more lively than Fiberskyn. It sounds a lot like a very good clear/blue plastic head, but perhaps just a bit more mellow. This head has a slightly matte texture, between the other two head types, that I find to be more comfortable to play than the smooth plastic heads.
Be sure to measure your drum carefully before you order a new head. There are several doumbek sizes, and the 8 1/2 and 8 5/8 rims are maddeningly close to each other, but won't accept the wrong head. The 8 5/8 head should fit the usual Ghawaret El Fan (Egyptian) or a Kirmizigul (Turkish) drum. One bit of advice if you've never taken the rim off your drum before: Use pieces of tape to mark both the rim and the drum body before removing the rim. When you put the rim back on, make sure the tapes align again. You can't assume that the 6 (sometimes 8 or 4) bolts will be exactly 60 degrees apart or that the bolt holes are drilled perpendicularly. This will save you from stripping the threads, which are often directly in the (soft) aluminum drum body. (Some drums have brass inserts, which are more durable.) You may notice that on better drums, the underside of the rim and the top surface of the drum body are already marked with the proper alignment, but don't count on it.
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