coop

Drum Maintenance (cont.)

Home

Cooperman's Bodhran Maintenance Standards

What is a Bodhran?

Holding a Bodhran and Tipper

My friend and fellow bodhranist Diane asked Cooperman Drums about treating a drum;

Striking the Bodhran

Details and Extras

Hello,
I bought a tuneable bodhran from you back in Dec. My question is, does the head need any kind of treatment? (goat) I have been reading about something called "Dubblin" that some people recommend. What is your suggestion?

Love my drum by the way!

Thanks,
Diane

Playing with the Skin

- How to Treat Your Drum

- A Good Case

- Cooperman's Standards

Hi Diane,
I'm glad to hear you've been enjoying the drum. If you've been happy with the way it sounds, I'd be tempted to leave it alone. The less messing around with it, the better. Dubbin is a proprietary wax/leather softening product that many drummer chat about; I think it's made in Australia. I've copied below a note on this topic I've been planning for a FAQ section of our website. Don't hesitate to follow-up if you still have questions.
Patrick

Choosing Your Drum

The short answer to your question is that we recommend that you use only water to make adjustments (further discussion of topic below). This has been our traditional answer. I recognize that there are many reasonable people who believe otherwise, so I�d like to elaborate on our reasoning.

Natural skin drumheads sound beautiful, but they pose some vexation for drummers and drum builders alike. As you have experienced, skins tighten and loosen with changes in humidity. In damp conditions the head will loosen, or at least drop some in pitch, at worst become slack and "dead." In dry conditions they will tighten, increase in pitch, and at worst tear from the shell. To some extent the sound range and character of a fixed-head frame drum is fated when the builder mounts the head. That is the significant deficit of non-tunable models; nevertheless, they are a traditional drum and a good choice, a nice, high quality drum and less expensive than the tunable drum. The tunable models are more expensive, but offer the added features of both being able to fine tune the instrument's pitch, as well as address the problems associated with fluctuations in the humidity and its effect on natural skins. As an alternative to the skin frustration there are synthetic heads; we work with some great professional drummers (Glen Velez and Jamey Haddad, for example) who now want only synthetic heads on their drums because they can rely on the synthetics not to become too �deranged.�

Page two...

contact me