by p.a.dogs1 » Sat Jul 11, 2020 12:55 pm
I had never contact to these instruments. Do you think that the special needs of Richie Gajate Garcia changed the way we judge congas fundamentally? Or was there just the need to find something special belonging to a new (or merited) endorser? What impressed me about the Luis-Conte-instruments is the fact, that one of the most respected endorsers of Meinl helped reducing the instrument to it´s fundamental aspects. I own a single Luis-Conte-conga and I was surprised by the fact, that it´s handling gives me a feeling of all around value despite the economical details. - But what can I contribute to your question about the LP drums.
Wood: I am not sure if the american name of the wood is "basswood" (tilia romania should be a kind of linden tree). Such wood is - among many other things - mostly used for carving, pencils, charcoal ... maybe it suits for conga bodies as well, maybe the wood is not of special meaning because of the fiber interior - rills (where others have reinforcing metallic belts). Maybe the rills have just the function to detect the attention away from the unalluring surface/structure of basswood in general.
Skins: they call it "hand-selected" and we are used to understand this as a feature of guarantied high(er) quality. At the end it just means, that somebody decides about differentiations in (maybe) three(?) gradings.
Sound: Can we talk about sounds objectively? In my experience have all drums specific ranges where they sound fully and voluminous (is it a relation of material, body volume and thickness of the skin?). But this changes already by moving it inside a concrete room. Another question which I am concerned with is: do there exist kinds of psycho-haptic, psycho-visual, visio-haptic and fetishistic phenomenia which are very much more influential regarding what we decide at the end. Some neurologist say that our decisions are made within seconds - that means before we have arguments. Our consciousness has to sanctify what our subconsciousness already had decided. Did your subconsciousness decide already?