Weiss Thunder Drum - 16x3

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I paint drums - skin drums - synthetic head drums - Tar style and Shamanic style. I also play them for healing and visionary process, for ceremony, for prayer, for celebration. I would give this drum a 3.5-4, since their is no 3.5 - i'll give it a 4. The cost of this shamanic style skin drum on a wood frame is exceptionally inexpensive due to being made in Pakistan and when the skin is stretched tight - the sound is resonant warm and beautiful. For cost on a skin shamanic style drum it can't be beat. Hand made drums of elk/deer/buffalo/horse/cow on wood by Native Americans run a well deserved $200-$400 on a 16-18" diameter drum - and they too can be poorly stretched. The inconsistency is the issue with the Thunder Drum. In a batch order of 5, three were well stretched and held their tone fairly well, and two were just unusable slack even when warmed up. Skin drums react to weather - temperature and moisture in the air, but an evenly and tautly stretched skin is still fairly resilient whereas a poorly stretched skin drum will be for the most part useless. The wood on the frame is an unknown so there is no input as to how the wood plays into the tone/ nor of the ecological impact. Also goatskin is much thinner than elk skin - more akin to deer skin in terms of frame drums and the sound/tone you can expect. But for a relatively thin skin - the drum is warm and rich when tautly stretched over the frame. If Weiss really wants to make this drum a 5 they would need to have some kind of quality control in place in Pakistan where the manufacturers really understood and were committed to the necessity of a tightly evenly stretched drum head, with regular random pulling of stock to test the consistency of quality. It would be nice to know what kind of wood is being used with regards to sustainability - is it raw virgin forested wood or?

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