Meinl Bongo Cajon - BCA1 Reviews 
3 / 5 based on 1 reviewsIt's a small wooden box of siam oak, with an interior divider/wall that provides two different chambers for two differently pitched tones ... cuz it's a bongo set.
$50 at Guitar Center. It's a good lightweight affordable drum that was acquired for a lady friend, to distract her from becoming a local 'Hawt Bass Babe' and thereby putting uglee me outa the bass biz ....
It's a good lightweight affordable drum, actually a bongo pair. Never needs tuning. Also, for a casual drummer who might just sit in wherever she can find a welcome, it avoids the 'Bongo Drum Musically Clueless Jerk' stigma, cuz it looks very different than regular round hide-headed bongos, which are so often carried and 'played' by too many BDMCJ's.
The woody look has an 'acoustic vibe' that may make it welcome in acoustic stringed instrument jammouts.
It's a bit harder to grip between the knees than a regular bongo pair, and it's not quite as loud .... altho the 'not-as-loud' can also be a positive aspect.
It's nicely finished wooden box, kinda like a folk guitar but of a different shape and minus the neck and strings. There are no screws or metal parts. The bottom edge arches up between the corners, to let some sound out if it's played on a table, but the little tiny self-adhesive plastic pads/feets at the corners just fall off. If you wanna play it on a table, you hafta improve that situation on your own. Also, you might wanna add something to the sides, to help grip it between your knees .... but it works pretty well as-built.
For the price of a good set of electric bass strings you get a cool drum. It's a box. It could be improved but it has no serious flaws, and the improvements are all for convenience, not to fix any serious problems. And such improvements would demand no great skill or expense, so each player can have it 'their way'. Thus it's quite decent as it is, but also serves as a foundation for easy [and inexpensive] 'personalize improvements'.
I think that makes it a middle rating, a '3'. Since it doesn't cost much, it's '3'
thaz easily worth its price, but it's a '3'.
Golem rated this unit
on
2010-06-08.
