Aegis Thunderheads™
Easy Installation
The "Under an Hour Head Change"
The Djembe pictured in these instructions was brought to us for a quick head change. The customer didn't want any of the old ropes replaced, just a new head. Bang! Done and ready to play in 30 minutes!
Take off the old head. Remove the horizontal tuning rope, the Mali Weave, from the drum. (Pulling the rope up towards the head helps loosen the diamond before pulling the free end through.)
If you haven't done this before, pay good attention to how you undo the Mali Weave and it will be simple to put it all back together again. The Diamond Knot:
Step Two:
Pull out about half of the vertical rope and loosen the rest so that the old head can be slipped out from under the crown ring.
Step Three:
Push your new Aegis Thunderhead down over the drum's rim and snap the old crown ring into place.
Step Four:
Turn the drum upside down onto it's head on a soft clean surface and run the verticals back through their loops. Doing this with the drum upside down helps to make sure that the base ring stays level on the drum. Keep the vertical lines fairly loose, you do not want to start tightening them until they are all in place. Note that these verticals always come up from behind a loop and wrap around the outside of the knot.
Now begin tightening them by pulling out the slack on each line, moving around the drum from the anchored end of the line. Go around the drum like this two or three times pulling just a little slack each time, making sure that you aren't pulling the base ring out of level with the rim. Keep on like this until you can't pull out any more slack.
Step Five:
Once you can't pull any more slack it is time to tie in your diamonds with the Mali Weave.
You will need to put in one full row of "diamonds" like this until you go around the drum and reach where you started. This will pull all the remaining slack out of the lines. Now reverse the direction that you are pulling the knots to start the second row of "diamonds". This row tunes up the drum to playing tension. Just keep pulling diamonds until it sounds right to you.
Reversing directions:
Presto! A perfect head in 30 minutes! (Your time may vary...)
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