You can go two routes, either have remo custom make you the needed heads it will be a 6 month cycle to get them, the stop regular production twice a tear for a day to make special order heads, or you can try Aquarian american vintage heads they are slightly over sized!! good luck!

I don't think the head will be as big of a problem as getting the rims to fit. I know I've seen special made lugs that allow the tension rods to go in at an angle, otherwise your rods will not line up with a standard 14" rim. A custom made Remo head will be pointless if you dont have a rim that will fit it, you would have to get a custom rim made as well. And an oversized Aquarian isn't going to solve your problem on an undersized drum.

The American Vintage heads are OVERsized by about an eighth or a sixteenth of an inch, so they're not going to help in this case.

I think the only practical option may be to use a 14" head even though it's slightly oversized for the drum. Unless your friend is also custom making a hoop for the drum, you don't have much choice but to use standard sizes.

It may not actually be that big a mismatch since modern 14" drums are 13 7/8". The custom-made shell is only 1/8" under sized, which means things will be 1/16" out of alignment at any given lug. A new head might seat a little funny, but would hopefully conform over time.

Like deadhead mentioned, the tension rods aren't going to be aligned right. I'm hoping you can get away with it since we're only talking a sixteenth of an inch. If not, you can work around the problem by making a shim or gasket to fit under each lug.

Gaskets under the lugs will make it work with a14" head. 8 lugs are adequate. There are 2 builders forums. Ghostnote and Drumshed. The folks on Drumshed are very helpful.

Good call on the gaskets Clapping Happy2

Yeah, I was going to say "put a riser under the lug", but that's just skater talk.

The benefit of putting a 14" head over a 13.75" rim is that you'll get the same contact with the head as bearing edges with double-45° angles--it will make contact at the flat part of the head, rather than at the collar. *Supposedly* this makes for better resonance.

Sounds like a cool drum. Can't wait to see pics! Yes Sir

wow!!! thanx for the replys!! Jump For Joy

would making it a free floater be any easier??

I think that would actually make it harder.

Making it a free-floater would be quite a bit more complex because instead of simply screwing lugs & gaskets onto the shell, you'd have to fabricate a tensioning mechanism -- usually a combination of an edge ring, posts, threaded inserts, and related parts. And all this work would do nothing to affect the head size mismatch.