Kalfo Calf Skin Heads - Celbridge, Kildare Ireland - Hide Heads Group Blog

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For all things related to the use of SKIN BANJO HEADS. Calf, goat, possum, hairy, shaved, stained, pre-mounted. You name it.

380 Members, Created 3/28/2011 -

Administrators: jbalch (owner)

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Kalfo Calf Skin Heads - Celbridge, Kildare Ireland

From jbalch on 12/17/2011 10:16:20 AM

Kalfo Calf Skin Heads. Manufactured in Celbridge, Kildare Ireland ...

I see these skins described as absolutely the best available for percussion. Has anyone ever used one for banjo?

2 Comments
	jbalch says: 12/17/2011 6:20:35 PM I found a couple of percussion suppliers that carry these in the US. Here is an e-mail reply I got from one today: Professional Percussion Products stocks an sells the 18" diameter orchestral snare drum batter heads we use on all orchestral snare drums. These sell for $95.00 each plus a small shipping and handling. They are obviously very pricey ...I'd love to see the quality.
	thumbdropper says: 9/14/2014 9:10:22 PM I just mounted an 18" Kalfo skin on an 11" Bart Reiter pot, #904 with Bacon style tone ring and internal resonator. It was by far the easiest head mounting task I've done so far. The skin is smooth, translucent, and very consistent in thickness, between 9.5 and 10.5 mils, clustering around 10.0. My micrometer has a throat only about 1.5" deep; so I could measure only near the edge. I was surprised by the thickness because Professional Percussion Products lists them as 24-25 mils, but it seems of such good quality that I decided to keep it and get an explanation later. My need was urgent; see my posting at banjohangout.org/topic/291174. Thinking a bit further, it's possible that there is a unit of measure error. On the website they state "We stock the 18 inch diameter skins with a standard of 24-25/100th thickness...", unit unstated. I had assumed that the unit is inch and a zero is missing from the denominator. 25 mils is pretty thick for a banjo head calf hide, but my favorite head currently is use is about 23 mils. However, if the unit of measure is millimeter, and we convert 0.25mm to inches, we get 9.8 mils. I will communicate this conjecture to the vendor. In conclusion, if the Kalfo hide wears as well as the one it replaces then it will be worth the price. I'd like to send a photo of the pot with the Kalfo hide on it, not yet trimmed. Best Regards, Paul
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