Changing heads.

[Carl Anderton]

Jim Hartel gave me two really nice skins at the Gathering.  I put one on my 1892 this afternoon.  And ripped it.  So, I gotta put the other one on.  The one I was gonna put on my Ashborn.  I got gigs, gotta have my equipment solid.

Taking the (new) torn head off this afternoon, I can give solid proof that although the skin seems totally dry, the inside part around the flesh hoop is still wet.  I nuked the semi-tight head out in the heat today, and thought it was ready to go.  When they say wait, they mean wait.  The interior part is still moist.  I saw it with my own eyes.

[Matthew Mickletz]

Still new and ignorant of many thing minstrel banjo, so I gotta ask: did the skin rip when you went to tighten it down?  For future reference and, hopefully, a future banjo with hoops and tension rods.  :)  

[Joel Hooks]

Dude, you go through heads like I go through socks.  What the heck do you do to them?  

[Carl Anderton]

Yeah, it ripped around the edge when I cranked it down.  It was still moist under there.  It really seemed totally dry.  Live and learn.  Gotta let it dry overnight.

[Carl Anderton]

Joel, I just had this great skin from Hartel and I felt like upgrading.  It wasn't totally necessary, I just felt like something new.

[Trapdoor2]

I usually let mine dry indoors (in the A/C) at least 24hrs, more often than not, I mount them Friday evening and then crank it down Sunday evening. Air Conditioning pulls a lot of moisture out of the air, so things dry more completely in the A/C. Outside, the humidity is too high (40% right now...it was 75% & 105F here today). You were probably pretty close to 50% humidity today and only now down to 40%.

The head Jim gave me as a replacement for my Ashborn is amazingly solid. So solid you could roller-skate on it. Took my Ashborn from a soft-voiced crooner to a "we don' need no steeenkin' microphone" roof raiser. I like it a lot!

[Greg Adams]

I've got some packaging tape and a reshaped salad fork that might help!

Joel Hooks said:

Dude, you go through heads like I go through socks.  What the heck do you do to them?  

[Joel Hooks]

Be careful, I've got a Patent pending on bent salad forks when hooked to banjo brackets. Packing tape-- you can keep that one.

[Rob Morrison]

I learned a new stupid human trick at the AEBG.  Saturday when many of the heads collapsed due to the humidity I tried to tune mine back up with the strings and managed to break not one but two perfectly good gut stings in the process.  Sadder but wiser, Rob Morrison

[Ian Bell]

I feel your pain Rob, I did the same thing with my gut-strung guitar at a rainy outside-the-museum-in-a-tent gig a couple of weeks ago. A particular waste since there was hardly anybody there to hear it anyway. (They sensibly stayed indoors!) I think they'd slipped down about a 4th.

[Rob Morrison]

Dan'l--  Sounds  like a plan.  The crazy thing about the AEBG situaton was that it was indoors and not raining at the time.  But for some reason the humidity level was about the same as Bataan in the monsoon season.  Sunday it was fine. --Rob