Sol Congas & Rumba Congas

[Dig Gonsalves]

Saludos, I just found this board. Has anybody tried Sol Congas? They feature 12" & 13" Tumbas, and even have a 16" Titanic model. I've heard good things about them and am ready to buy my first conga, probably a Tumba. I'll probably have to order as they don't have a dealer here in San Diego. My background is saxophone & bass... but it's time.
Paz y Ritmo.

[Tonio]

I've seen the Sol congas years ago. I think it was the first model after his establishment(Valje) was burned down.
The hardware was really lame, I mean very substandard as
a professional instrument. Otherwise the drum was ok. It looked nice, I wouldn't use it as a drum to take on a gig. But that was the first model and have not seen the current offerings.
Hey I'm in San Diego too.
P.S. If your are refering to a tumba as in Tumbadora, I would suggest to try a smaller drum first. If you are looking to do more Haitian drumming maybe a Tumba is ok, but you need to learn the supportive parts first, which involves, the smaller drums and bombo, and bells etc.


Tony

[Relachs]

my conga teacher uses sol drums. they kick ass. real crisp with very warm and rich tones. i do know that they're quite expensive. the warehouse is located here in San Francisco, so it may be worth a trip up here if you're planning to invest the cash...they also make a really nice quinto.

good luck,
relachs

[CongaCaja]

I had some recent experience with the Sol Congas. I live in San Francisco and I purchased some LP Matadors last year. Although I like the drums, I wasn't happy with the skins. So, I contacted Akbar of Sol Percussion and he said could re-skin them for me. Very nice guy and he was quite proud to give me a tour of his shop.

It's a small two-man operation. EVERYTHING is hand-crafted. Even the hardware is shaped in their custom forms and welded there in the shop. The only thing that seems to be off-site is the anodized coating process for the hardware...which by the way, looks really cool. I thought the hardware seemed strong, so maybe it has improved since Tonio's experience with the first model.

Their web site is doesn't show every model that they build, but it generally has a lot of good information about the majority of their drums.

http://www.solpercussion.com

While my drums were getting skinned, Akbar was kind enough to loan me one his Sol congas so that I could continue practicing (I take lessons on a fairly regular basis). One thing that I noticed is that the drum was light in weight. I think one of the reasons is that they use 5 tension lugs per drum instead of 6.

Another reason is the stave construction for the shells. For example, LP uses a 3-ply glued staves that are kiln-dried. I think Meinl uses a 2-ply kiln-dried process. Sol are single ply but are not kiln-dried. Akbar told me that not using kiln for drying was a superior process. Personally, I do not know which is better...I'm just reporting the info.

The drum that I used was not new, it seemed to be one that is used around the shop for playing around. The shop does have a small "showroom" of sorts which is just a small room which a sample model of each model and each size.

Regarding the drum that I used, the skin seemed a bit thin and I think this contributed to an annoying overtone (an octave and 5th above the fundamental) that I could not get rid of. However, if you order drums from Sol, you can specify the thickness of heads that you prefer for each drum. I did not spend anytime in the showroom with the other drums, so I cannot say that this is a general problem.

Since you do live in California, I would encourage a trip to the shop (or at least any local dealer who might have them in stock)
because they are very different from the mass produced LP drums and you might want to be sure that these are the hand-crafted drums that fit your tastes.

best of luck.... chris