Here’s another before and after. We recently upgraded the skins on these JCR bongos for a customer on the west coast. I mounted amber Middle Eastern Steer- 1mm on the macho, 1.6mm on the hembra. It’s always an honor to work with instrument history.
These bongos were made by Maestro Cali Rivera. “For decades, from a tiny and crowded space in a nondescript building in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, Rivera operated a place of magic and legend. Rows of gleaming cowbells — the shop’s speciality — each buffed to perfection by Rivera or his longtime workmate Pete Lugo, were stacked amid decades of history; old bongo shells and machine parts, boxes ready to be shipped to customers around the world and the metal working tools that have hardly changed since cowbells, or cencerros, were first used in Cuban music at the turn of the 19th century.”
