Journal · The Riqq
Choosing a Riqq
Three kinds, four things to check, and the makers I trust — so the drum fits your hands instead of fighting them.
Choosing the right riqq matters more than people think. The wrong one makes playing much harder every day; the right one all but disappears into your hands.
The riqq has a lot of decisions built into it, and the choices you make before you ever play a note shape how easily you’ll progress. There are two parts to getting it right: knowing which kind of riqq you want, and then checking four specific things on the drum itself. Let me take them in order.
Three kinds of riqq
There are three main families. The modern riqq hides its tuning bolts inside the frame; the main countries building them are Lebanon and Turkey. The traditional Egyptian riqq has a natural skin and no tuning mechanism at all — the old-school sound. And there is the modern riqq with an external tuning mechanism, which itself splits into genuinely high-quality instruments and cheap touristic drums.
A word on that last one: I would not buy a riqq with an external tuning mechanism as your main drum — and certainly not without holding it first. They tend to be less comfortable, and they’re built for a playing style different from the one I teach and play.
The diameter
The traditional and most common size is 23 cm. If you have small hands, 22 cm will do the job. If your hands are average or large and you want a deeper sound, 24 cm is the natural choice.
- 22 cm small hands
- 23 cm the traditional, most common size
- 24 cm larger hands, a deeper sound
- 25 cm an extra set of jingles — a sound feature, not a main riqq
There are 25 cm riqqs with an extra set of jingles, but I wouldn’t buy that as a main drum — only as an additional one for its sound. The 25 cm tends to be much heavier and asks for more control.
Depth — the one to get right
This is the factor most people overlook, and it matters enormously, because the depth of the frame governs your whole grip. A riqq too deep for your hands makes playing very difficult — sometimes simply impossible. The common depth of a modern riqq is 5.5 cm; a traditional Egyptian riqq is around 6 cm. Unless you have very big hands, never go deeper than 5.5 cm. If your hands are small, some makers will build a shallower frame, closer to 5 cm. Don’t compromise here — depth literally affects your everyday practice.
Don’t compromise on depth. It decides whether the drum fits your hands — or fights them every day.
Weight
Traditional riqqs are lighter, having no tuning mechanism. Modern riqqs can be medium-to-heavy depending on the design — the paint, the size, the frame; covered in mother-of-pearl, much heavier. External-tuning riqqs are often heavier still. As a rule, I wouldn’t cross roughly 800–900 grams. If your hands aren’t very strong, look for something lighter — and ask the builder, it’s something they’ll know. The one to avoid outright is the simple Alexandria riqq: extremely heavy, and basically unplayable unless you have very strong hands.
Skin
Your main options are natural skin — mostly goat and fish — and plastic. Thickness shapes the sound the same way for both: a thicker skin gives a drier sound, a thinner skin a more resonant one. Among plastics you’ll find transparent, semi-transparent, and fully opaque heads — each a different thickness, so each its own voice. Ask for videos and let your ears choose. Sayidi fish skin is considered the most traditional and the best for riqq — but the fish were nearly hunted to extinction, so it can be hard to find now. With any of them, ask for recordings of the options and let your ears be the judge.
The makers I trust
One of the biggest problems in the market is that the good makers often take a long time — some close to a year — to build and ship a drum, which complicates everything. So I’ll try to balance quality with practicality.
The legendary modern-riqq maker is Kevork, in Lebanon — the first innovator of this kind of riqq, and still the top of the craft. His drums sell mostly second-hand at very high prices; only worth it if you can truly afford it, because the price is more the collector’s value than a difference in quality you’ll actually feel.
My own go-to these days is the Lebanese maker Elias Nakhle — “Nakhle Percussion” — top quality with good delivery times most of the time. Also from Lebanon, Ghassan riqqs are good, though the logistics can be trickier. In Turkey, several builders make solid riqqs at a good price with very good delivery — Salim Percussion and Sonika Percussion among them. In the traditional category I’d go with Amir Ezzat — bearing in mind these need a lot of maintenance, including a heating pad on humid days.
There are other good makers out there, but some have proved unreliable on delivery, so I’ve left their names out.
A riqq that fits your hands is one you’ll actually want to pick up. Choose carefully once — and then it simply gets out of your way.
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