I don't have the Earthtones. As I mentioned, they are OUT. They wouldn't fill any of my order. Let me high and dry for over a month, they said. I'm not impressed. So, I've got calf skin heads to play with. I really really really wanted a variety to experiment with. Oh well.

How tight did you tension the calf head?

They are definitely a different sound. There are going to be inconsistencies because they are a natural product. If the heads are fitting too tightly and binding on the shells, that will have a direct effect on the tone. I know, because I have a drum that was really tight and Rob had to make a special flesh hoop with an Irish calfskin. Once that was done, the drum sounded great.

Maybe try a really thin resonant head like a Diplomat and then tension the calf batters to where they feel good and then adjust the resonant head with the drum mounted until you hear it come into "the field".

Also, it may take a little time on the drum before the calf seats itself properly. I wouldn't recommend over-tightening them, but a fair amount of tension can be applied. Play them, they will lose tension. Add a little more tension...play....re-tension. Eventually, they will acclimate to the edges and then I think you will like them better.

Clear or Coated on the reso side?

I've got G1 and Dips on the reso right now. I've got a coated Amb on the reso side of the 14...which is the one that really sings. I can't figure it out. I tried thick med thin clear coated. My guess is I need to let the drums come to each other and not try to tune and play right away. I'm not a very patient man.

I use coated Dips on my drums. But, on my calfskin drum, I have a "slunk" calfskin head on the resonant side.

The slunk heads is what I figured. When I spoke with Rob, he said that most don't buy calf as a reso and that a thin head would do. I ordered up a couple of OLD calf heads to experiment with as reso's. I had planned to use the goat skins as resos, but that didn't pan out. Maybe in a month or two. I won't let this pass without at least attempting it. I'm really curious as to how that will sound.

I left the calf heads on overnight and checked them this morning. I pulled the resos off and the calf sounds nice. I put the resos back on and they sound somewhat unpleasant like before. I figured that's what was going on. It's the reso head that's causing the calf to sound poorly. Oddly enough, they resonate great, but the tone is off. They just sound "icky". I will have to experiment with the reso heads quite a bit more. When I swapped heads yesterday, I experimented with loose, medium, and tight tensioning of the reso head. It didn't seem to help much. My guess is these need a really good reso head to maximize the tone. Either that, or my ears are just too sensitive to drum tone. I doubt that's it 'cause I'm half deaf from playing for so many years.

Are all your edges clean and smooth? Rough, uneven edges will give you problems. Also, 2 things. skin heads are better suited to rounded edges (outside round), use candle wax on the edges (NOT vasoline or any other oily substance, the oil will ruin the skin) to help seating and tuning the skin.

Using skin as a reso on a kit will give you problems due to the fact now BOTH heads will succumb to enviromental conditions and go out of tune constantly. Use the thinnest batter (i.e. Diplomat weight) as a reso.

Would it make a difference whether I use coated or clear reso's? The coated seems to dampen them a bit (as would be expected), but I see a lot of coated on the bottoms of toms with skin on top. Just curious on this logic.

I use edge wax on the toms. Should I use something on the outside of the drum to help seating? That's something I never considered.

If you need any diplomat weight heads I still have those ludwig weathermaster coated mediums available.......

Thought folks might find this interesting:

http://www.banjohangout.org/forum/archive-viewer.asp?TOPIC_ID=129336

Patrick

This is a little video demo I did to shine a bit of light as to what the issues are. I believe the flesh hoops are being shipped undersized and that is the root of this.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBIO8-6rh0E&feature=channel_page[/ame]

The 12 inch calf skin head came in today. It's tight, but it does go over the 12 inch tom shell on my little jazzer and it does sound ok. The 14 calf skin also fits the jazzer floor tom pretty good. So, I've got one kit with two toms that have calf heads. I've got the 13 and 16 calf skin heads that don't fit any of the three kits. I can get them over the toms of one kit but they are extremely tight and really don't sound out.

Out of four heads, I've got two I can use. That's not good.