Ordered two of these, 12'' and a 14'' inch to use during outside gigs (we have to play outside simetimes and the weather can get humid - normal skin tuned high can get damaged in this manner very easily). I like the modest uniform black looks, no pseudo-ethno patterns on it etc. The sound, however, leaves room to be wished for. The great (and bad) thing was that the producer seems to be aware of this, so the drum comes prepackaged with some plastic stickers to be glued under the plastic hide, allowing one to remove some undue tinny tones from the sound. The bad - had I known this, I'd not have ordered this drum. A sweet piece of engineering, but the top material really looks like any regular plastic drum film, perhaps thicker - not sure it is actually a special "hyde-like material" (I thought it would be made of some crazy high-tech fibers). All in all, we use them to play under bad conditions. But it comes nowhere close to a real djembe, neither in feel nor the sound. If one keeps this in mind, they are cool toys.
PS. I think the 14'' sounded a bit better.
PSPS. The 14'' was too heavy (despite being very light) for the Meinl djembe strap, so a metal part of the strap broke after half a year. Probably says more about the Meinl strap than this Remo instrument.
