Toca Conga Maintenance

Properly maintaining your Toca congas will help keep them sounding and looking great for years to come. After reading this blog you should have a good understanding of how to maintain your Toca conga drums.

It is a good idea to slightly loosen your heads after playing. Going in a circular motion, give each tension nut a half turn clockwise to loosen. Do this, working your way completely around the drum twice. This simple procedure will help to lengthen the life of your heads. During the manufacturing process, (before skin heads are mounted to the drums) heads are soaked in water to make them pliable for mounting. Due to this process, some of the oils are depleted from the heads. To achieve the best possible sound, we recommend rubbing a small amount of hand lotion containing lanolin into your drumhead, once they have been tuned. This will make the skins sound better, increasing volume and tonality, because the skin can relax to vibrate better. Occasionally the tension rods will squeak when tightening or loosening. This occurs when the lubricant between the nuts and washers dries up. If this occurs apply some Toca Lug Lube. You can keep fingerprints off your shell with a chamois polish cloth.

When putting on a new bison conga head it is a good idea to turn the head upside down and fill the inside with 1/2" of cold water. Let soak for two to three hours. This will make the head more pliable and will make it seat on the bearing edge. Tighten the head until there is no valley on top and it is even all the way around. Let sit overnight and tune with method described above.

Toca Hardware Maintenance kits are available with any Toca Conga order at X8 Drums.