Manufacturers, brands, skins, maintenance, stands, sticks, michrophones and other accessories for congueros can be discussed into this forum ...... leave your experience or express your doubts!
I am provided with all 4 sizes of lp giovanni wood congas.Mostly I use conga and tumba which perform with a sonorous and warm sound. The problem I face is that quinto and requinto which I need for soloing, produce ovetones and metalic sounds almost in any range of tuning. I used both rawhide heads and synthetics made by evans but the problem exists. Also I noticed that the rawhide heads provided by LP are very thin for these congas.Is this the problem? What's my next option. Could someone suggest me anything? (My problem is that I can purchase/receive conga heads only through mail without having the possibility to check them first).
I have a set of LP Galaxy Fiberglass and never had the problem of the "metal sound" you are having. Obviously, they are fiberglass and a little bit of overtones is natural.
From the "get go" I took the original heads that came with the conga and put some medium thin heads. (Now have synthethic heads and they sound great)
Have you checked if they are not tuned too high? What abou the hardware?
More commens might come from the guys that are more "congueros" than I am...
Try removing the skin completely from the shell of the drum. Then rubbing in candle wax all over the edge of the shell - the part where the skin touches the shell the most. Now take a peice of either duck tape or medical tape, something that is somewhat thick and apply on the opposite side of the playing surface, the center of the head. The peice of tape or adhesive does not need to run accross the whole bottom end of the head - I would use about 3 inches. I had this same problem with one of my toms in my drum set and applying some tape as I have suggested took away a bit of the over tone.
I beleive Evans and Remo sell some kind of "over tone remover", but instead of paying 10 - 15 bucks for something that would do the same as medical or duckt tape would be kind of silly.
Another thing to consider is possibly going with a thicker head. Let me know if that's an option you want to explore I know of a friend in Jersey that has access to thicker conga/quinto heads.
that's it. By sticking a round shape plaster in the inner center of the rawhide, the overtone problem was eliminated and finally I listen the desirable sound of these congas.