Pearl Travel Congas |
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So these are practice congas right? Wrong! Available in 3 sizes, 11”, 11.75” and 12.5”, the Pearl Travel Congas are “real” instruments that sound and act like full size congas. Featuring wooden shells, which are identical to Pearl’s full-size congas except being a lot shorter, and Remo FibreSkyn 3 synthetic heads, these travel congas can be played resting on your lap or mounted on stands. They fit onto the stands via a “Y” shaped bracket that fixes to the underside of the tuning lugs, and then the bracket fixes onto the top of the stand centred directly under the drum which provides great stability. Two stands can then be bracketed together using the PPS-50TC Stand Bridge which prevents them from drifting away from each other in use. |
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The basic idea behind the Travel Conga is of course, quick set up/take down and portability. Some of the full size congas I have reviewed are so heavy you actually need to be quite strong to manipulate them! Not so the Travel Congas. You can set these up on stands and be ready to go in around 2 minutes. Although the shells are as
used on other congas in the Pearl range, they are of course “cut-down”
to only about 3” in length and are sealed on the underside. So
it
Conclusion: When I first saw the travel congas I really thought they were practice congas of some sort. And although you can use them as highly portable practice congas, they are also very capable, sonically and visually, of replacing or augmenting full size congas on stage or in the studio.
Upbeats: Downbeats: Price: Web Links: |
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The
heads are tensioned using 5 precision Allen bolts which provide for
tuning using the excellent foam handled Allen wrench, which is also
provided. Additionally they are fitted with Contour Crown rims to enable
comfortable playing due to their smooth, contoured edges. The FibreSkyn
heads provide excellent tone and, being synthetic, are less susceptible
to being affected by changes in humidity or temperature.
is surprising that they produce the sound they do. From a playing point
of view they feel and respond just like full size congas so you can
use the full variety of conga strokes and they will respond amazingly
well. The sound produced is almost identical to full-size congas but
does I feel lack a certain fullness, which I guess is provided by larger
shells. That can be addressed though by the soundman on the mixer in
a live or recording situation.
Which
begs the question in these carbon-footprint fixated times that if they
sound essentially as loud as normal congas, then why do we need full
size congas and drum kits that use so much more wood and hence trees?
I envisage people a world where only cut down “travel” instruments
are used, which are highly portable, and which sound as good as normal
instruments. Save the world – use cut down instruments!