The Tuning (Tensionable) Systems

*Added to the website on the 21st April, 2008.

NEW CONSTRICTOR TYPE TENSIONING SYSTEM

The system that I had patented for a single tuner for bodhráns 5 years ago caused me very bad headaches when I came back from illness. It was very mentally stressing to make. The system is good, well tested now and successful. The only drawback is the mental difficulty in making them.

As I had taken out a patent on the idea, other makers felt this was to prevent them from using the idea. This stopped the normal design development that happens when other designers refine and improve a new idea. It was not my intention that people should not try the idea. Hopefully many other young designers will copy and improve it. This happened to the pushed tone ring type, when different makers brought their ideas to the raw design.

David Gormlie introduced the brass adjuster screw brackets and Allen head machine screws. His drums were an unbelievable upgrade in neat making and neat finish. His sensitive skins with their lovely mellow sounds could go deeper and rise higher than the normal drums of the day and the sounds of his good drums have never been bettered (never bettered by me anyhow). Mark Moggy with his introduction of a new synthetic screw block and beautiful shell decorations added to the design progress. Brendan White with his innovative tensioners added yet another dimension.

I had the bad experience previously however, of many other people claiming that they had come up with the idea. Like everyone else, I have an ego and this was, and still is extremely hurtful to me. The patent was my way of preventing a repeat of this. I hope never again to block anything to do with improving the function and musicality of the bodhrán, as it is more important than me.

I saw an idea that Tony HedgeWolf © 2005, posted on the internet about making a drum from a drainage pipe and Jubilee clips. He uses 3 interconnected clips. I decided to develop this idea. I had used it as a boy, making my own drum kits from thick plastic stretched over Snowcem tins. My tensioner in those days was a rope tourniquet. Jubilee clips had not reached Dungiven in those days, but rope and bailer wire were as good a substitute anyway.

My first attempt is as in the photograph below:

Photo 1 of drum.

First prototype of my new constrictor system.

The big danger with the system was the possible damage caused by local pressure on one part of the skin, that would burst it. I overcame this difficulty through a lot of failed experiments and long sleepless nights. Every solution that looked good on paper proved to be either too cumbersome, too weak, too dangerous to the skin or shell, until after about 20 failures I got it working and simplified into a rugged system that tensioned the skin equally, all the way around the shell equally.

I have tested it now for 2 years so that I would not end up looking stupid or let down customers by selling an unreliable system. Finally to retain the image or look of my other drums I added some cosmetics and sin é (that’s it) or rather seo é (this is it).

Band Tensioner System Bodhrán.

Single Screw Tensioner / Band Tensioner System Bodhrán

This is my new drum model and is now available. I call it the Band Tensioner System because the old bicycle makers used a similar system for brakes on their tricycles in the 1880’s. They called them band brakes.

The big advantage of the system is that the drum cannot be knocked out of tune by uneven tension that can be caused by loosening / tightening one screw more than another, in the first tone ring system. The single screw on the outside is easy to operate with a T-Bar Allen Key.

The Patent Application Number is 0803435.7.

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STICKS

I now sell 3 types of stick:

Stick A
This is simply the fiddle bow type made from rosewood, with a slightly weighted end for balance. The rosewood has the right density and springiness - not too light and not too heavy. The fiddle bow makers have agreed after 300 years of testing that 8.5 mm is the best grip diameter. It has no balls on the ends, no ridges in the middle and no rubber grip aids to change the optimum diameter size. This stick is light and fast to use and good players agree that the balance is very good. It is just about the right weight for use on medium to light skins and 240mm (9.5 inches) long. Many good teachers recommend this stick.

Stick B
This is a new design to many but I have been making and improving this type for these past 30 years. The design evolved from efforts to soften the sound of the stick on the skin. Later on, it was an attempt to revive the rim playing from the old Kerry styles where players alternated from playing on the skin, to playing on the rim. Ordinary solid ended sticks give an unacceptably hard rattle, grating to the ear. These sticks give a nice light clicky sound and bounce back extremely quickly. Crucially the grip size is 8.5mm and again the length is 240mm (9.5 inches) and from rosewood. It is much livelier than the skewer type sticks, yet gives the same soft sound.

Stick C
This stick is even faster than Stick B. Made from a long grained type of hickory. The wood is springier and lighter than stick B so that it jumps back even faster again. It has the same dimensions as B and is ideal for playing triplets using one end.

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BODHRÁN BAGS
I have bodhrán bags for sale to fit my drums. They are 16” diameter and have an extra heavy zip that opens three quarter way round, rather than the half way round opening, as in other bodhrán bags. This makes them less prone to damage when putting in the drum. Black in colour, they are without any advertising written or drawn on them. They have the minimum of padding, so that when travelling, the bag folds flat. The bag can be put into a suitcase and the drum sat on top of it and thus, the drum can be carrried without taking up space. When you arrive at your destination, the drum can be put into the bag. Thus, you don't have the hassle of taking it on a plane as hand luggage or carting it around airports when you need 2 free hands. They are ideal for snare drums as well.

Front of bag - Pocket for sticks etc to front and handle on top.

Back of bag - Back strap for carrying bag on back.

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HISTORY

Bodhrán design development since the sixties

In 1969, I heard a strange percussion on an old record and loved the unique sounds and rhythm patterns. A friend, who had lived as a student in Dublin, told me it was a bodhrán and that he had seen them being played in Slattery’s in Dublin.

In this part of Ireland there was no tradition of bodhrán playing. So I didn't know what one looked like, I had absolutely nobody to teach me, and nowhere to buy or see one. An hour later I was making my first from his description. My old schoolteacher always used to say "the man that never made a mistake never made anything". Mine was a disaster, but I was started on a lifelong passion.

Soon I learned of James Davey in Sligo, David Gunn in Fermanagh, Sonny Canavan in Kerry and Ted Furey in Dublin. I met Ted Furey at a fleadh in Malin Head and saw his bodhrán and his tensioning system and was greatly impressed. It was the first of this type that I had seen. Recently I learned that Sonny Canavan had also made a skin tightening system.

4 pictures of Ted Furey's system (Above bodhrán made by Ted Furey)

Each year I spend my Summer holidays in Gaoth Dobhair in Donegal and joined the sessions in Hiudái Beag's in Bunbeg. Because of the humidity level in that part of Donegal the skin became very damp and most nights was too slack to play. When I got home I decided to design some system to solve this.

Ted Furey's system got in the way of playing on the rim so I decided to try and keep the working parts to the inside of the drum, using the tone ring system of the banjo as my guide. Instead of pulling the skin from the outside over the tone ring, I decided to try pushing the tone ring from the inside.

My friend Joe Diamond had built his own banjo when we were students at teacher training college and it was whilst examining his banjo, that the design idea came to me. Our design lecturer Mr Nolan always told us to think backwards, meaning that if you see an idea; "think out what is the opposite". The banjo system pulls the skin from the outside, the bodhrán pushes the tone ring from the inside.

First Bodhrán to use the Screw Driven, Pushed Tone Ring

The first bodhrán to use this system is shown below. I designed and made this drum and later sold it to Paddy McCrory (the famous barrister) from Belfast. It now belongs to his son Barra McCrory. It is the first bodhrán of it's type to use the inner-tone ring. Other people have claimed to have invented this system... More power to them!!!

The screws are spouting bolts and the tone ring is very thin but it did its job beautifully. Thus a new design was born and like most new ideas was heavily criticised by the traditionalists. I suffered many embarrassing moments in sessions because of their comments, but thankfully progress prevailed and the instrument took its biggest step to become a musical rather than a percussive instrument.

Photos of the first ever bodhrán to use the screw-driven, pushed tone ring. It now belongs to Barra McCrory. (Close up of adjusters) *Crude, but effective!

Many makers added lovely refinements of their own that ensured the design took a strong hold. Notable amongst these were Mark Moggy, David Gormlie and Brendan White. Their adoption of the system was crucial to its taking a very firm foothold on the design path. Not only did they improve the tensioning system, they introduced new materials and a new standard of quality in the making and finished appearance of the drum, without being too gaudy. Most serious players now use drums that have some means of tensioning the skin. It got named the tuneable drum but I prefer to call it tensionable, as tuning it is quite a different problem.

There are a number of different screw tensioners to be found on the drums now, so in the interest of design progression, it may help others if I outline my thinking in this respect. Let me say from the outset that the plastic blocks I use are not the best that I can think up. Obviously they will wear out much quicker than the sturdier types but they have some hidden advantages.

These adjusters must:

- be strongly secured to the rim for maximum vibration transfer from skin to rim
- use easily found parts and tools
- be as cheap as possible
- use 2 different materials on the bearing surfaces
- eliminate vibration rattle that happens when metal bears on metal

I needed to either make something everlasting, or find something so cheap and commonplace throughout the world, that anyone can get a new one in their own town and replace it, should it break. I chose the latter. For the same reason, I also use star-head screws, just incase the screwdriver gets lost, as a new one can be got in any garage or DIY store. Should some young maker want to improve what we older makers use, remember to use 2 different materials and add some rubber or plastic to cut out vibration rattle. The old jazz drum makers did this. Good banjos have 26 tensioners... I use 8 for practicality... a few more would be an improvement... less is worse.

Ring development

In the sixties, the usual method of making a drum was to get a sand sieve (we called it a riddle), remove the wire and stretch a cured goatskin over it. To make a different size involved steaming the wood after scarving the end and bending and clamping it around something round. Oak, Ash or Beech were best for this and since planks were around 3 to 4 inches thick, this limited the rim depth. The new PVA and casein glues had just been introduced and this opened up new possibilities. The skins were fixed using cut tacks, stapled or the more expensive upholstery tacks.

The Tensioning System

The tuning (tensioning) system employed by the current range of Seamus O'Kane bodhráns consists of a rim or 'tone ring' system which is controlled by tensioning pegs. Eight tensioning pegs are considered to be optimal for a good tuning of the instrument.

According to Seamus, it was Ted Furey who constructed the first tunable bodhrán, and his was a system for tuning the bódhran from the outside. (as stated above)

Seamus O'Kane himself devised the internal tone ring system for bodhráns, which has been widely immitated and adapted. In the early days, Seamus concoted two distinct systems, namely; the 'turnable tensioning pegs' and a 'cam tensioning system'.

Turnable Tensioning Peg		Cam Tensioning System - (older system)

The pictures below show the OLD "Cam Tensioning System" (no longer available)

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The pictures below show the Turnable Tensioning Peg System

For the 'recommended system for tighening and loosening' the "Turnable Tensioning Peg System", see "Q2" in the "FAQ's" section of the website: click here

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2003 Single Adjuster Tensioning System - *NO LONGER AVAILABLE*

By 2003, Seamus O'Kane had developed and tested a new tensioning system using only one adjuster. Unlike other systems, it cannot be knocked out of the original tuning by unequal tightening or loosening. This should lead to the tone getting better with age.

*Note that the following systems are no longer in production:-

- the 'cam turning system'

- the '2003 Single Adjuster Tensioning System' - this is the 2003 'Rack and Pinion' system.

Pictures of the 2003 Rack & Pinion System that drives folding wedges, to tension the skin *Note, this system is no longer in production.

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