Tonehammer has announced the release of Solo Dhol for Kontakt.

For Solo Dhol, Tonehammer captured two of the same full-sized drums used in the Epic Dhol wet hall ensemble library. This time, Tonehammer captured them one by one, dry and up close. Tonehammer used a wide variety of sticks, mallets, brushes and hand articulations, as well as unique tunings, to explore the widest possible range of sounds that these instrument were capable of. Tonehammer recorded every single note with a full 10 round-robins and up to 14 velocity layers. The end result fully covers the traditional Dhol sound and then takes the exploration further, for an entirely fresh take on the instrument.

These drums have a goat skin bass head (called "dagga") tuned with a single rope, wound around the drum, with a sound that can range from bayan-like water drip to a taiko-like boom-crack. They also have maylar treble heads (called "thili"), with a sound that ranges from a timbale to a nasty, abrasive, grainy and thrashing snare sounds. That's why Tonehammer like to refer to the thili as "snare" and dagga as "bass". Tonehammer beat the hell out of the Dhol, to push the sound as far as they could take it.

This library includes custom controls for easy tone shifting and precise sustain shaping. Tonehammer also included a large bonus collection of custom convolution reverb impulses, captured in some of their favorite spaces. They're easy to use in any stereo .wav compatible convolution plug-in.

Solo Dhol is available for download now for a special intro price of $79 ($89 from February 5th, 2010).

Note: Native Instruments Kontakt 3 / 4 full retail version required. Free Kontakt Player not supported.