I play five Giovanni congas. I think the Remo NuSkyn is the best synthetic conga head out there. It looks, feels and sounds better than any other synthetic heads. Unfortunately, Remo doesn't make a head to fit my 9.75 " Giovanni Requinto, so I am forced to use the Evans head on this drum.

By definition, the Requinto is made to be cranked tight. But even in nice, warm environments I have had a few of these heads literally explode on my as I tried nudging them up to just an E above middle C; which is about where this drum is meant to be played.

For as long as it lasts, the head is very loud and it cuts like crazy (although I would prefer a warmer requinto tone). But until Remo makes a NuSkyn head that fits my Requinto, I guess I'm stuck with the Evans. But believe me--I always keep a spare requinto head in my roadcase now.

I purchased both 11" and 9.5" Evans conga heads and found them to be of seemingly fine quality. Upon mounting them on the drums, I noticed that they did not gradually increase the tone until after the head started to become near the correct tension for the head to ring. The tone usually increases slowly until you reach your tuning point. These stayed dead until just before the correct tightness. After I got both of them to sound nice, it took very little to convince me that these were excellent products and the claims of great tone and weather resistance were correct. I was pretty happy! I used them for about one month. I had to gig with the drums so we loaded them with the heads up, in bags with extra padding and nothing was set on them for the ride. That evening the temperature was 4 degrees farenheit. The back of the truck was not heated, but there was padding and nothing resting on the heads. Upon taking them out of the gig bags, I found that the smaller of the two heads had split, I am assuming from the cold. The heads had been played for about one month indoors, and one hour in the cold must have split it. The larger head was fine. Upon examining several other congas with these heads installed, I have found 3 other instances of the heads splitting for other reasons than cold. This should not happen, it doesn't happen with skin heads, and Evans claims they are weather resistant. The head is now on the way back to Evans so we shall see what the outcome is. I have seem 4 Evans heads split on the drum now, and it raises a few questions!