by jorge » Mon Mar 30, 2015 3:27 pm
One sixteenth of an inch out of round will have negligible effect on the sound of your drum. Rule that out as a cause of the bad sound, something else is causing your problem. One of the best sounding quintos I ever heard or played was very oval shaped, probably more than a half inch out of round. Bongo hembra sound is determined by many factors including skin species (eg, cow, calf, mule, water buffalo, goat), how much it has been played and broken in, density, thickness, stiffness/flexibility, age and tuning of the skin, height of the rim when mounting, evenness or unevenness of the skin thickness, diameter of hembra, unevenness of tension in the lugs, small partial tears in the side of the skin that are not easily visible, flatness of the plane of the bearing edge, too much grease under the skin at the bearing edge, shape of the bearing edge and other factors. The sound has a lot to do with your technique as well, a really good bongosero can make almost any bongo sound good and you can learn to bring out the sound you want to a large degree.
First, I would find a really good bongosero and ask him to play your bongos and tell you what he thinks. If that is not feasible, you can experiment with small pieces of duct tape or silicone putty on the bottom surface of the skin to see if you can dampen the ring. Often the ring you hear is not audible over a band and makes no difference in the sound the audience hears. The quality of the projected sound at a distance is the important issue. If that doesn't work, take the skin off (mark exactly its orientation so you can put it back on the same way) and examine it and describe it to us. The skin could just need to be played more to break it in, not sure how much you have played it since 2007. If there is something obvious wrong with it, you may be able to fix it easily. If not, putting a new skin on it is the tried and true way, if not the cheapest way, to improve the sound. There have been many threads on replacing bongo skins, skin types, sources of skins etc.