The regular thing to do with congas is to soak the old head in water, take out the metal hoop, and buy a conga head and mount it on the hoop.

It's not that hard, I did it right the first time.

Putting a Remo head on a conga is, er, wrong.

I think conga heads are mule, I could be wrong on that as I'm pretty clueless about hand percussion.

No offense, but I'm quite sure my hand percussion buddies would think a Slingerland or Ludwig conga was a joke as far as being a legitimate conga. My impression was that the major drum companies were, hate to say it, but a bunch of white guys totally out of their element when it came to Latin percussion and that they butchered their attempts at these things.

The only reason they made stuff like congas was because their main hamburger was the school system, and there were high schools in Iowa that bought Ludwig congas to play with timp mallets in a Burt Bacharach medley.

Sorry to be sarcastic, but the Latin perc stuff from the American drum companies was 100% comedy, but I'm not saying your drum is bad quality or that you can't make music with it!

We need a picture - are you sure you mean you have a conga drum and not a cocktail drum?

a 12" cocktail drum?

I agree with you with the fact that "tuneable" congas and bongos offered by Slingerland, Rogers, and Ludwig were kind of a joke, but the timbales may be a different story. While they were not tuned in the same way as traditional timbales, they do sound ever bit as much like traditional timbales do.....the bongos and congas however.......Eye Ball

Ah, I didn't see the head size.

This must be what you have (in the middle) - it originally took a calf head, which you probably don't want to bother with. But you can use a fiberskin head to come a little closer than what you have now. It still won't sound like a real conga no matter what head you use; but its better suited for sticks than a real conga which may work for you.

That's a funny page from the Slingerland catalog... Africa: Illinois-style!

A friend of mine used to look at those sticks that say "built in maraca" and he thought that that was where they were made.

I'd still encourage David to find a real conga head if one will fit. The head on a drum is the #1 thing... I remember how surprised I was when I first heard Rototoms - I wouldn't have expected that much resonance.

So anything you can stretch a good head over will produce some sort of results, and even though the drum isn't an LP I'd put a real head on it and play the crap out of it!