Now that you've had a taste of Calf, you'll want more!

You can repair the hole with heavy silk or muslin and white glue. Remove head, patch from underneath and weight it down, let dry. Wax paper between weight and top head surface prevents sticking.

And, if you are a good surgeon, you can actually dampen the area of the tear and then stitch the "wound" back together with some silk thread and a sharp sewing needle. It IS skin, after all.

I tell ya, I would love to outfit a whole kit with calf. I better start saving my paper route money. I like the idea of the white glue, cow on cow!

Yep. Nothing like calfskin. I have an old Ludwig Junior kit that has all the original calfskins. The 22" bass drum has a beautiful set where you can see the spine and shoulder marks of the calf it came from. Chewie: Such a beautiful, primitive sound when the heads are real skin. The attack is almost butter compared to a synthetic head.

O lugs, re: the attack thing. I've been thinking for a long time that attack is the real difference between the vintage and modern sound. Am I right? Your description of playing a calf head got me thinking.

The thick shell, sharp bearing edge coupled with a plastic head in a modern drum makes it speak very quickly. You're basically playing a relatively stiff column of air that's minimally affected by tuning, probably only head choice can make a change to the attack characteristic of the drum.

The thin shell re-ring drum with a round or combo type bearing edge combined with a thin coated or skin head kind of lets the drum breathe and let's its true tone come out. The thinner shell vibrates more and the heads are more flexible. You can tune up or down to get a different character from the drum.

Just some thoughts. Let me know if I've got this right.

I think you're right on the mark!Party

Ok, So if I go with calf on the batter, what about the reso? Does that half to be calf to get the best sound? And do they go out of tuning quicker?