Drum Repairs
Drum Re-skinning
“When the skin of his first ever djembe split in the mid 1990s, Richard (Rich) initially started teaching himself how to reskin and totally rebuild djembes from an American videotape, but learned much more in situ from local masters, first in Gambia (with Samba Coumba Ngom, from Senegal), then from Salifou Ouedraogo in Burkina Faso.
Drum Retuning
For skins that aren’t split, he can provide a “tune-up” service, breathing unexpected life into an old drum, but of course this is at the client’s risk.. though it will sound much better, it will inevitably result in shortening the life of the skin, and in rare instances even breaking while undergoing tuning.
In which case… he can do a basic reskin – ie supply, fit, and tune a brand new skin with no other new materials, or…
Rebuilding & Re-skinning
Provide a full rebuild and reskin service, in which he provides all new materials… rustproofing the rings, new cloth and knots on the rings, with new 7mm black nylon twine used throughout. In addition he will fill any imperfections in the wooden shell, and smooth and level the bearing (ie playing) edge. He does this with any old djembes he acquires for himself too – of course it’s labour intensive, but the result looks and sounds much better than it ever did before (even if he says so himself!).
