Timpani wear and tear

The timpani are really big and really heavy, and they usually last a long time. For instance the drums in the picture there we got six years ago. And they will probably last 50 years. I own a set of timpani for my own personal use that were made in 1891, and they are still going. The only things that need replacing are the heads or the skins that we play on. This tambourine has a goat’s skin head on it, now if that breaks which is very likely to do, you put your fist through it, you just put a new piece of skin on it. But I usually change the drum heads on my timpani every year. They get tired and worn out like a string on a violin, or the reed on a bassoon and it will also sound best if they are reasonably new. And the same with my mallets, they wear out, they take about two years for the wool felt on them to wear to a point where they don’t sound very good. So as a percussionist we have a reasonably low rate of wear and tear on our equipment. But the equipment itself can be very expensive, hundreds of thousands of dollars for a set of timpani.