 Metloef 15"  Lambeg
skinned bodhran
(Review by Dirk de
Bleser)
- 15" x
7.5"
- Lambeg
Skin
- Tool-less
Tuning
- Taped
edge Applique
- Internal
patch
- Mahogany
finish
- price
£$?
My "Ringo" Metloef
Dirk de Bleser
A BoDojo members
review of his drum,
Edited for BoDojo by
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12-2006
 I'm Dirk de Bleser and I'm teasing the old goat's back for about 6
years now. After the untunable starting model (Mac) got floppy, I decided to buy
a 40cm tunable double skin from the Irish maker
Brendan White who lives and works in The Netherlands. Mind you, Brendy still
plays well (photo 1), but the criticism I got from my fellow musicians was that
she didn't produce enough volume and although I taped it and put a Remo Falam
slam on the inside of the skin, I was not completely satisfied with the result.
Then I met JoBo, one of the moderators
for the Bodhrandojo
Yahoo group and his drum called "Loefke", a well played-in 14" Metloef he
bought through Paul Marshall a few
years back. Loefke is one of the first Lambeg skinned drums made by Rob Forkner and when I played it at that
session I was seduced from the first stroke of the cipín, even with a light
Tipper it produced a volume I've never been able to achieve with any of the
different drums I tried out before. Gary Fortune another group member also
ensured me he was very satisfied with his Metloef. So all the above and some
extra back-reading through the BodhranDojo's archive made Me start an email
correspondence with Rob Forkner to decide on my new drum's spec's.
John's "Loefke" was
to small for my left hand, and Rob argued a 15" would be better than a 16" sound
wise, so I choose the 15" (37.5cm) with the maximum-depth-for-the-same-price
7.5" (18.75cm). I went for a rich, dark mahogany brown coloured, edge-taped rim
combined with Rob's tool less tuning and a weighted Lambeg skin . On top of all
that, it has something special...
During our email
talks back and forth, I made a special request to Rob to make the cut-through as
close to the head as possible when building my drum. For some time I had been
experimenting with card board boxes to find out where I wanted the hole and
found that in going as close to the skin as possible I played a lot
easier.
Due to this shallow design I don't have to bend my skin hand wrist at
all and this has resulted in a painless left wrist ever since. Rob himself tried
it out after he made it and also found it very comfortable to play he told in
one of his replies. Because the tuners & tuning ring need some space the hole is made at
7 cm from the skin and It's 12 cm wide, although I still would be able to play
comfortably with 9 cm width.
Although I
wanted the patch to be placed
in the centre of the skin, Rob convinced me that the off-centre patch would work
better. He placed the patch at the 70% vertical line in the 4 o'clock position
and, indeed, I must confess it works fantastic, especially with the first beat
of the reel rhythm played away from the body, as Johnny McDonagh taught us
during the Ballaghaderreen Summer
School 2006.
It is as a tribute to Johnny that I decided to name my
new Metloef 'Ringo'.
Now that I have
been playing my Metloef for half a year I'm extremely pleased with the
result.
The drum skin is very smooth so my left hand glides easily (I keep
using talc powder to keep my hand dry).
The tool less tuning system works
quickly and precise while the Lambeg skin makes the bodhrán react immediately,
even to the slightest change in pitch and pressure of the left hand, all these
features combined with the width/depth of the frame produces an improved
tonality and the volume I was after, even with a lightweight tipper. The use of
a thinner lighter cipín also enables me to play much faster than with the
heavier one I used before, in a session a while back I even succeeded following
the bullet tempo of box player Dave
Munnelly for the first time in my 'career', and a few weeks ago I played
with up to 15 melody instrumentalists and had no problem standing my ground.
With my new Ringo I also got no comments anymore about the "body" of my sound...
On the contrary...
Listen
to a few snippets of the Belgian Trad band Cairdeas I'm playing with here,
Still on
my 'Brendy' doh,
Kind greetings from a
happy drummer,
Dirk De Bleser aka Dirk De Bodhrán aka
Buikligger
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