Meat is Murder to many people.Would you (well you couldn't but) consider a head made from human skin? That's how they feel about it.
I find this concern about using calfskin heads rather bizarre. We (most of us in this country, anyway) eat meat. We use the hides of cattle for lots of uses, including shoes, clothing and seating among others. We eat veal which comes from a calf and use calfskin leather for many products, including expensive gloves. We hunt and kill animals for sport. We buy beef, chicken, pork, lamb and other meats already slaughtered by someone else and nicely packaged so we don't have to do the dirty work. We have shows on nightly TV which graphically depict autopsies on a regular basis.
Drums were originally hollowed out logs and anything else that would resonate, but for thousands of years, and even today, drums have been using animal skins and hides. The great drummers of the '20s, 30s, 40s, and even into the 50s always used calfskin heads. That's what Gene Krupa was playing on in Benny Goodman's Sing Sing Sing? And those are the heads that Louis Bellson, and Buddy Rich used in the '40s. All the great drummers in all the great bands during the big band era played on calfskin.
When I started playing in the late '50s calfskin was still in considerable use and was mainly abandoned because mylar heads were more practical and cheaper. not because they sounded better. They were stronger, more easily available and held their tuning because they were unaffected by humidity. I, like most other drummers, started to use them because of the convenience, not the sound. The difference in sound quality was obvious, but the cost, availability, and convenience of mylar won the day. For the last 60 years head manufacturerers have be experimenting with their products to make a mylar head that looks and sounds more like calfskin. That the reasoning behind Fiberskin heads and Aquarian antique heads. But none of them sound like the real thing. Many prefer the sound of mylar because that's what they are used to hearing. Many if not most of the international drums used in World Music have heads made from animal skins. For drummers today to be squeamish about calfskin heads seems very odd to me.
You seem to pride yourself on your vintage kits, of which you have many. You also have a 1940's Radio King. Can I assume you have calfskin heads mounted on it so you can hear it as intended when it was new?
By the way, the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights were all written on Parchment which is animal skin. Just saying. Cool Dude
