Customer Reviews

Latin Percussion Compact Quinto, 11-inch

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Why, you may ask, should you buy this little body-less conga, when you can get a "real" conga for about the same price? Well, for one thing, this *is* a real instrument, made by a great company (Latin Percussion) that's going to outlast one of the cheap Asian imported Congas that you'll soon be dissatisfied with. Another is that this is a drum you'll want to keep, for practice and travel, even if you do have a set of custom $600 congas, tumbas, quintos and so forth.

I bought mine as a learning instrument. I've played drums off and on for decades, but never hand drums, and a friend recommended the Compact Conga as a much better choice than the cheap imports I was looking at. He was right. This is a beautiful, solidly made unit that's easy to play and delivers a surprising amount of tone, considering that there's no body. True, you won't get the real deep bass notes of a full-sized conga, but you'll get all the exrpessiveness of a full sized drum. (LP has a video of Giovanni himself playing it on their web site that will demonstrate this for you).

The three raised feet on the bottom of the drum allow it to be played on a table top, but you'll really want a solid snare stand to put it on- something with mass, that can take serious slapping. I suppose you could build a wooden stand if you're handy- just make sure it can take heavy playing without moving about. (Personally, I've been kind of tempted to place it over the end of a Sonotube to hear how it would sound).

For beginners, like myself, this is a great way to learn without investing a lot of money in expensive drums. For experienced players, I think this would be a great practice or travel drum. If you have your own home recording studio, I suspect this would be a great way to add some good conga sounds to your recordings without a huge investment. A fine product, with typical LP quality, and a great value.

There's a lot more to this than a rim and a head. If you take a look underneath, there is additional structure that has been carefully designed and built to produce a 100% (and I do mean 100%) true conga sound. No bass note, but the slap, muffled and even in-between tones are all there. This can played as an instrument in its own right or used as a practice instrument. It's really quite amazing.

I play with a piano trio at a club every week and I use the Compact Conga nightly. I place it right on the snare drum to play on suttle latin tunes. It's a nice change of pace for the band and for the audience.