At OakenFire Rhythms, we highly value both craftsmanship and customer service, and want to address the understandable concern about the longevity of natural skin heads on the instruments we build.

All djembe heads eventually split, and this is always a concern when buying a new instrument or having your old drum reheaded. The amount of tension on the skin of course plays a great part in this. We tune all our djembes, as well as the drums we rebuild for clients, to ready-to-play djembe accompaniment tightness and pitch. At this level of tension and tuning, we warranty the skins and our work as follows, in the event of breakage:

Custom Djembes and Rebuilds:

3 months: 100% of repair and materials cost. Customer pays all shipping costs.

3-6 months: 50% of repair and materials cost. Customer pays all shipping costs.

6 months-1 year: 25% of repair and materials cost. Customer pays all shipping costs.

If you choose to tune your drum higher, any warranty is at our sole discretion. Remember that slow tuning is much better for the life of your head: please pull only a few diamonds at a time and play the drum in a little bit each time to allow the skin to organically adjust before continuing the tuning process.

We will tune drums to Solo Djembe tension and pitch upon request, but as this massively increases the chance of the head splitting at a much faster rate, there is no warranty on these heads.

Student/Import Djembes
These drums tend to be built in Africa with rope, rings and skins of lesser quality, and then are subjected to container travel across the ocean, with fluctuations in temperature and humidity that are further deleterious to the skins. These instruments are more affordable, but they carry no warranty.