LP 1400-UG Udongo II

I am a big fan of udu drums. This one offers huge range of sounds, cause you can simply hit it all around and when you play also with the air between two holes, it starts singing even more. The combination of traditional udu and bongos is interesting and brings also quite funky shape. I call it an alien's baby. :) I love to make rhythms on it for my looping improvisations. It sounds great and tunes well with many acoustic instruments. Deep bass and crispy high end of clay are just so relaxing and soothing. Adding it to my recordings always brings some good vibe and bringing it to jam sessions is great fun. Although, You have to remember that udu is not a very loud drum. Rather subtle and delicate. Needs a space in music to be heard. Shure SM58, SM57 and some nice condenser mic will definitely do the job with udongo. Be creative, practice hands skills, play with the air, look for many different qualities of the sound, but also be careful, never drop it. ;)

Very pleased with this Udu/bongo hybrid, I haven't had any issues with it since I bought it (well over a year ago). It is a very unique percussion instrument, in the sense that it sounds similar to a traditional Udu drum but can be played more easily by beginners as it sits like bongos on your knee.
Musically, they have a nice range, from high notes with the small chamber to deeper notes with the larger chamber, you can acheive some really nice tribal sounding rhythms similar to tabla.
One minor disadvantage is that they are very quiet when in a band setting so they will need mic'ing up; this is not much of a problem however, as they have two small microphone holes in each chamber to allow this.
They need to be kept in a safe place as they are ceramic so will not necessarily stand up to being dropped.
Great percussion instrument overall!