Paul Mc Auley - Deep Lambeg

• 15.5" Outside Diameter
• 5" deep
• lambeg skin
• Taped edge applique
• Birch - natural blond finish

Price: In the region of £130-150

Paul McAuley This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it website McAuley bodhráns, BallyCastle, N Ireland

During the discussion I asked Paul to make me a bodhrán to my own specifications. Construction was delayed by non-availability of Lambeg skins and I received that drum at the start of May

This is an independent review. I purchased this drum from my own money and without favour from Paul.

Deep Lambeg's Stats

• 15.5" across
• 5" deep
• lambeg skin
• Taped edge applique
• Birch - natural blond finish

Price: In the region of £130-150

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Paul McAuley

McAuley bodhráns website

Benchmarking

Because the O'Kane drums are so well known and widespread and this drum is of similar dimension and skin, I will use my own O'Kane as a benchmark and comparator. Hopefully it will help readers to place the drum in context; be aware however that there are individual variations even within O'Kane instruments. I know mine to be an exquisite playing example, they are all excellent drums however.

The drum skins come from the same 'lambegger' where Seamus O'Kane sources his drum skins.

Paul is normally asked for thicker-skinned, more traditional drums. However he does use Lambeg skins where requested and where they are available.

Shell & Tuning mechanism

The main shell drum is 15.5" (39.5cm) OD across and has a depth of 5" (12.5cm) It is laminated from two 4mm layers of birch ply giving an 8mm or approx 5/16" thickness. The joints are clean and tidy as you can [just about] see from the image on the left. This is impressive on a naturally finished drum.

There is a 2.5" x 1/8" (3mm) inner re-inforcement ring and a 1/2" x 1.5" internal tuning ring all constructed from the same ply.

The drum is very solidly constructed. At the head of the drum, all of these layers add to just under an inch thick of wood in the top 1.5" of the drum. To my mind it's a little unnecessarily heavy for the job, it marginally decreases the playing area and gives instrument-specific considerations for rim playing. It does its job very well in all respects however.

I had requested that Paul use 8 tuning lugs on the drum. The greater the number of points on a drum, the more evenly the tension is spread, the easier it is to tune and the less likely it is to mechanically detune.

The tuning mechanism used by Paul (image left) consists of hand tapped brass blocks through which stainless steel allen headed bolts are screwed. The block fixings do not breach the exterior of the drum which is a very nice aesthetic touch.

The bolts press on to screws that hold brass washers in place. It all looks and appears to be strong and functional. Paul supplies each drum with a tuning tool which he makes himself. It has a usefully shaped tip which means that it will work at a slight angle to the bolt without cutting up the bolt head. It works well and delivers good accuracy.

My only comment would be that without a/the tool, the drum is untunable. Hmmm... I remain convinced that Rob Forkner's Metloef thumbscrews are the bodhrán player's best friend

The Skin

The skin is a lambeg skin. It is defined as such because of the treatments that it has undergone to make it suitable for another type of drum. It is defined mostly by its thinness and evenness. The skin on the McAuley I would reckon to be 0.6mm thick. My O'Kane is about 0.3 or 0.4mm.

Paul does not condition the skins in any way, they are mounted on the drum the way they reach him. Seamus O'Kane conditions his skins to make them more flexible.

First impressions

As soon as I put my hand on the drum shell, I could hear the tone from the skin, I could tell that this was going to be a good, sensitive drum.

Next thing I noticed was the weight of the drum, a later comparison shows a distinct weight differential between this and the O'Kane. Looking at the construction of the drum above, it's not hard to see why.

The skin looks identical to any Lambeg skin that I have encountered on a bodhrán and had innate flexibility. It was relatively hard to the touch and a rub with the tips of the fingers on either side of the skin gave a clear 'scratchy' sound which is not desirable in playing but is common to all fresh skins. More later on how I dealt with that...

When I first played the drum, it was instantly apparent that this was the same breed of instrument to those made by O'Kane et al in the flexi-camp. The flexibility induced by the thinness of the skin produced clear tone bending over an octave and more, although as a brand new skin it took an effort to get it up high. Pops were clean and crisp and the drum had good stroke articulation throughout all pitches. There was some Tipper and left hand noise obviously.

When I got it home

First thing I did when I got the drum home was to rub down both heads with very fine p400 grit sandpaper. It is important to rub lightly and to keep moving around the drum. With this done on both sides of the skin, the difference in playing noise was like night and day. With playing the surfaces will become shiny and frictionless, but this shortcut makes the playing experience instantly more enjoyable. It does no harm to the skin if you are careful not to rub too hard. It is advisable to do this outside and/or wear a face mask as it produces extremely fine powder-like dust.

Once I had sanded it down, I applied some Olive Oil lightly to the outside of the skin using a tissue and then proceeded to rub it in using the rounded end of Paul's tool (above), pushing into the skin as I went. Olive oil is not the ideal product for this, dubbin or lanolin would have been better.

Immediately I had finished that, the drum took on another form of sound and there felt to be more skin flex. It definitely was getting into the same area as the O'Kane, no doubt.

My final act of sacrilege was the application of a weight to the centre of the back of the skin. This is something that I had tried this on my bodhráns for a couple of years. It is inspired by the indian Tabla and while it clearly helps define the fundamental and reduce wolf tones, my recently developed style means that it tends to get in the way. I haven't met a bodhrán yet that IMO couldn't benefit from such treatment but I'm not sure at this point where to place it so it is sufficiently out of the way. In my case I used blu-tack, the putty used for attaching posters and paper to walls

Now that I've had it for a week.

The best indicator for me of my liking for a drum is if I reach for it when I'm practising or playing. I have been reaching for the McAuley equally to the O'Kane all week. There are differences or course, however given that the skin has only had a week of playing I would expect those.

By comparison, the O'Kane has greater depth to the sound, it's richer and more full, but the McAuley has a definite voice quality that is only marginally less pleasing at this stage. The pitch range of the McAuley is less than the O'Kane because of the stiffness of a new skin but will develop with play. I expect the McAuley to mature to be similar to the O'Kane which has a head start because of Seamus' processing and also because I have been playing it for over a year.

What do I think?

Well, it's hard to say with the drum being so new and the skin not yet having had the opportunity to play in much beyond delivery mileage. I do like this drum, I admit to being surprised by just how good it is and the little pieces of work that I have undertaken are, to my ear, wholly successful. The drum will play in to be a great drum, I'm just not sure that I have the time to do that.

It is a well constructed instrument that demonstrates well Paul McAuley's skills as a bodhrán maker. There has been good attention to detail throughout and the quality of the drum shell and tuning mechanism is wholly superior to an OKane. I would encourage Paul to use a thinner shell and tuning ring to maybe allow the shell tone to be heard more clearly and project the bottom end a little more.

At the heels of the hunt, yes I am happy with my purchase and I would be happy to recommend this drum in this configuration as a good quality instrument. Sales may suffer because of strong competition from / domination by O'Kane instruments and consideration of pricing may help to make it more attractive to purchasers, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this is a damned fine drum.

Paul

(c) 2005 Revised 2006

All content of the bodojo website, its agents and owners reside with the originator of the work. No reproduction, duplication or other representation of the work is permissible without the permission of the owner of the work. (c) 2005 All Rights Reserved

---

Average user rating