Buying new heads for congas and bongo are nothing like buying heads for your drum set or snare drum. The sizes of the drums vary from manufacturer, and the heads don’t always fit the drums. This can be frustrating, I know.
The following recommendations are based on my 20 years experience with conga and bongo heads. I use a combination of real and synthetic heads, depending on the drum or application, and I’ve been happy with the results from both.
Conga Heads
The choice between real skins or synthetic comes down to your preference or convenience. Real skins provide a better tone, but they can be inconsistent in thickness and mounting. Synthetic heads are better for weather changes, yet they lack the tone of an animal hide.
If you often bring your drums to play at different places, I recommend synthetic heads. They’re easier to tune in wet and dry weather, making tuning quicker and more reliable.
The following table indicates whether a drum manufacturer makes a particular drum size or not. This can be helpful to compare to drum head sizes. It won’t always match perfectly, but it’s best to have good information if you’re about to take a risk.
LP
Evans
Remo
- Fiberskyn (Tucked) – 11″ [Amazon], 11 3/4″ [Amazon], 12 1/2″ [Amazon]
- Nuskyn (Tucked) – 11″ [Amazon], 11 3/4″ [Amazon], 12 1/2″ [Amazon]
- Skyndeep – 11″ [Amazon], 11 3/4″ [Amazon], 12 1/2″ [Amazon]
Bongo Heads
Like conga heads, bongo come in both real and synthetic materials. The tricky part with synthetic bongo heads is the size.
Sometimes the size of the drum doesn’t match the size of the head, but the head still works for the drum. Likewise, some of the synthetic head models are only designed for certain sized drums — S-Series Remo is for small drums, for example.
