premel wrote:the best cajon .. will probably be the one you make ... !!!
Making an own cajon is a nice experience, but there is a little danger, that every successful try will provoke ideas of another one, which could possibly be better.
As a cajon-maker I found out a lot about materials, proportions, surfaces, players, playing-techniques and styles. At least (when talking about peruvian or flamenco models) I have to say that there is not one best cajon.
50% of a cajon sound is generated by the playing-technique. A conga-technique produces sounds, which are different from those of a framedrum- or darbuka-technique. And even if we assume that a percussion-player would find out about a specific cajon-technique, there is always the aspect of individually preferred sensoric feedbacks.
The other 50% of the cajon sound depend on how the player and the special cajon harmonize.
A frontplate of massive wood has normally to be thicker and (therefore) more brittle than a plywood frontplate, which can be rather smooth. And maybe this is the reason why a a special playing-technique has been developed in Peru, where cajones are often made of massive wood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhRa89UFEgM&feature=relatedThe original peruvian cajones do not have an extra snare mechanism. The effect comes from a brittle frontplate which is screwed slackly (but with the right tuning) to the cajon´s corpus. When playing such a frontplate with a conga-player´s technical insistence, it looses it´s sound potential. Look to a clip of my endorser Nené Vásquez:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJJNVjYc-IUNené needs a thick but smooth frontplate, because he wants to produce bassdrum-like sounds. And this is the advantage of plywood: you can make a composition of different plies which gives a special hardness (or smoothness). This gives a special sound - but also an inspiring haptics.
When using rather thin plywood-plates also the treatment of the surface – different kinds of laquer, oil, wax etc. - has an enormous effect on the sound.
The technique of Jorge Palomo, one of my favorite players, is what I would call a optimal and very powerful cajon-technique:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9obwSL_Nf8This technique could only be developed on plywood-plates. The one, he uses in the clip, is rather light and smooth.
p.a.dogs1