Nickel-brass...are you talking about the Turkish style darbukas that were there last night (the silver drums)? I find the main appeal of those to be the large head, which means a nice, deep woof, and the top end suffers.

As for heads, I advocate for synthetic heads because natural skins are notoriously finicky. Synthetic heads aren't affected by weather in the same fashion--only extreme temp changes require consideration. The natural heads are affected by slight temp changes and humidity and are a pain in the butt outside of air conditioning. So mylar or fiberskyn.

As for material, the metal drums are more durable than ceramic. For a drum to be hauled around with lots of other gear, I think that's important. I like my copper drum, though I've played on nice aluminum drums, too. From what I understand, there can be major problems with cast aluminum, so spun aluminum is preferable. I've no experience with wooden tabla.

And the Alexandrian (Egyptian) design is preferable. The rounded hoop design is so much easier on the hands than the Turkish hoop design. Some of the Turkish drums have the hardware down out of the way, though the sharpness of the bearing edge still beats up hands.

As for size, the Alexandrian drums seem to come in four sizes: the mini, the standard lead tabla, a new size called the sombati (or something like that),and the bass dohola. Which size you want depends in large part on how you want to play. If you want to play lead and do lots of fills and solos, then the standard lead tabla works best. If you want to hold down the groove without much of that, then the dohola works best. The sombati was developed to make for deeper doums while keeping crisp teks, so it appears suited for switching roles (I've not played one).

Goatskin if you are willing to baby it, synthetic if you aren't. But make sure to get *good* goatskin, if you can't judge skins go with synthetic.

Explorers Percussion on Wornall has (or used to have) a wide range of drums, you could go there and at least get a feel for sizes and tones that suit you.

A drum is like any other instrument, you shouldn't buy one until you have heard yourself playing it.

Well...I ordered my new drum via Nakano....and it was shipped....and was supposed to arrive Friday. But....apparently it didn't get here before 6pm when we had to leave. Now it's scheduled to be redelivered Monday....

Hoping it will arrive when I am home.