Banjo

[Artie Owl]

Hey Guys, my grandfather passed away to cancer this year, and it was only recently my grandmother and I were prepared to go through his things to see what we wanted to keep in the family and what we wanted to donate to charities. Among the things I inherited was a banjo that actually belonged to my Grandfather's father, so it's pretty old, but the snare like head on it is in pretty good shape I'm posting a pic of it as a "before" pic now and I'll follow up when I get it restored. I know playing a banjo is completly different from playing guitar, but could you say no to an opportunity to learn something that's been in the family for generations now?

[ksdaddy]

Um....

 

It was made in Asia in the 70s at the earliest. It has an aluminum pot. It's what's known as a 'bottle cap' banjo.

[Artie Owl]

Haha I did see the made in Korea stamp on the back, but I thought it was older than that. Oh well I'm still excited and it's still technically "generations" it's just two, instead of more. Do you know anything else about them?

[ksdaddy]

They were cranked out by the thousands and they're probably still being made. Some had no brand, some had decals (distributors choice of brands), some were standard Korean type brands in the 70s and 80s, Kent, Hondo, etc. Some necks were awful (twisty), some were pretty good.

 

They aren't bad banjos. Now let me clarify. If you made an attempt to compare these banjos to a regular Mastertone style banjo with tone ring, you'd be laughed out of the room. Just not the same league at all. Almost none of the parts are 'upgradable' because of the odd cast pot, the 30 brackets, all that. You get what you get and are limited to choice of heads, tuners of course, bridges.... but you'll never make it much more than it is.

 

Having said that, if anyone wants to try banjo for the first time, don't want to break the bank, want something nearly indestructable, and yet play and sound pretty darn good, I wholeheartedly recommend them. Just don't be fooled by the name on the headstock; they all come from the same line.

 

2 years ago my brother (long distance trucker) had a mishap in his house trailer in the dead of winter. His furance quit while he was out of town, the pipes froze, broke, and flooded the trailer oncve it thawed. He had one of these banjos and it was practically floating. He was going to dumpster it and I intervened. I took it apart, cleaned it up, put a new bridge and strings on it, and it was fine. I think I ended up selling it for a hundred bucks or so.

[sgbass]

When my dad died a few years ago, I got this Gibson Banjo. In very good shape, with the original case. A real nice family heirloom to pass on.

[TommyK]

From the neck on down, yours looks a lot like my FIL's 'Castilla' I refurbished for him.

 

 

 

70's ought to be right.

[MojoRedFoot]

ks...what do you know about mandolins? I inherited an old A style Supertone mandolin about 8 years ago. My grandmother's father bought it from Sears. She believes it was made in the 1930s. I has an oval sound hole. Assuming it's actually close to 80 years old, it still plays and sounds quite well.

[ksdaddy]

I believe Supertone was Sears' house brand prior to Silvertone. Like Silvertone, there wasn't a Supertone "factory" but they were made under contract. Pretty hard to date them though. I saw the brand in a reprint of a 1927 catalog.

 

Sears owned Harmony for some time and I think they sold the company to a group of employees in 1942 with the understanding they (Harmony) would produce instruments to Sears under the Silvertone name, so that may have been the end of the Supertone brand.

 

One of my banjos was a Supertone in a previous life. Probably the rim, resonator, and flange are the only original parts.

 

I do have a green Supertone uke that I made into a wall clock. The finish is odd, swirly like. I think they painted them red or green and then textured them with goose feathers while the paint was wet.

[milod]

My cheapie banjo - ain't had it out of the case in years - was built a bit more "standard," but yeah, I think if you get a decent playing machine, banjo is a lot of fun.

 

Tuned to an open G for bluegrass, you can frail it, pick it or strum it as you will. It's great fun. I remember playing "Jesse James" on mine maybe 40 years ago for my Dad to show him my "new" acquisition and his comment was that it reminded him of "hillbillies" he knew in the Army. I took that as a compliment.

 

BTW, if you use a capo on a 5-string banjo, you'll also need a 5th string capo. Mine runs on a rail screwed into the neck. That was one advantage to the cheapie - I didn't feel guilty installing the thing and if I'd blown it it wouldn't have been such a loss as on a Gibbie.

 

OTOH, a college friend did some marvelous inlays on a Mastertone fingerboard. I thought he was a marvelous Scruggsie player, too, but he claimed otherwise. Talented kid whose future I've often wondered about these past many years...

 

m

[Artie Owl]

Cool, thanks for the info, I'm not sure how I'll fare picking at a Banjo anyway, but I'd rather have it than donating it to who knows and them doing who knows what to it. I just won't sink a lot of money fixing it up is all.

[ksdaddy]

A couple years ago I built a Pete Seeger long neck. Long story on this one, enter at your own risk:

 

 

http://www.angelfire.com/me4/ksdaddy/lnb1.html

 

 

A few months ago I contacted pete's banjo repair guy and asked if he could get Pete to look at my work. Pete thought it was wonderful and suggested I add a coordinator rod, which I did, whether it needed it or not, the MAN suggested it so I did it!

 

He also asked about the number of frets. He thought it looked like I had only added two extra frets and not three. Truth is, I mistakenly positioned the 5th string tuner at the 7th fret and not the 8th like Pete's. I wanted to crawl under a rock. I had the number of frets and scale length spot-on, I just didn't locate the 5th peg in the right spot. Doesn't mean anything except if you capo it at the 3rd fret to play it 'normal', the 5th string tuner appears wrong.

 

Pete extended an invite to me to come see him sometime this summer. Or at least told me where I could find him and told me he'd make the time to chat with me a little. That didn't make my day, it made my YEAR.

[milod]

Brandon...

 

If it's playable, consider a new set of strings and then...

 

http://www.ezfolk.com/banjo/Tutorials/G_Tuning/g_tuning.html

 

http://www.get-tuned.com/banjo_tuner.php

 

That'll get you started. In theory, of course, you could simply barre at 5th and 7th frets for the IV and V chords, but... <grin> you'll do a lot better than that and there are a lot of neat free on-line lessons you'll find.

 

Oh - unlike the four-string "plectrum" banjo, the 5 string usually has relatively light strings and are picked or strummed pretty much bare-handed or with thumb-finger picks.

 

One good thing about that is that it tends to get you thinking about a lighter hand on guitar, too.

 

KS - nice looking banjo you built there! Whoooooeeeee.

 

Brandon - note that the type of banjo KS just showed is more for the "folkie" type stuff than bluegrass. In past years banjos have been built and modified from all sorts of shapes and materials on the folkie side. The Bluegrass side tended more to the 5-string-resonator standard. The four-string was mostly fiddle tuned and used a lot in Dixieland and "jazz" of the pre and early radio era with occasional exposure on TV in the 50s. After the "folk" era of late 50s and 60s I ain't seen much of 'em around. They're kinda specialized to that type of music.

 

m

[Artie Owl]

I kind of want to learn to play the classic "getaway" music where you imagine a possey in a big ol' truck chasing you down, that would get me into it I think, but it would probably also require a good deal of familiarity and practice on my part.

[milod]

Brandon, do you fingerpick at all now?

 

"Frailing" is kinda fun and isn't quite what you're thinking about, but would work for it. Figure a downstroke with the nail of your pointing or middle fingers on a string for melody, then another fully chord downstroke and thumb the 5th drone string only.

 

That gives a "bump-diddy" rhythm. Then you get fancy from that. <grin>

 

In ways fingerpicking variations are easier, in ways frailing is easier. Frankly I never got past the "okay, I can sound like a banjo player if you're not one yourself, but I know enough to know I ain't."

 

But it was fun. Buddy of mine and I used to swap banjo and guitar ledes and instruments for ... uhhhh ... "young unattached male songs about relationships with females of various descriptions."

 

<chortle> Ah, youth; too wonderful to be wasted on the young.

 

m

[TommyK]

This is a good site for Harmony instruments history.

 

http://www.broadwaymusicco.com/HARMONY.htm

 

I think I've seen something on mandolins and other miscellaneous instruments over there.

 

Chicago Music Instrument Company bought up a lot of US guitar and other stringed instrument manufacturers over the years. They made a plethora of different brands and house brands. Sears and Roebuck did, indeed, own them lock, stock and barrel at one time. During the folk instrument boom of the 1960's they made the decision to not expand production in order to meet demand. This left the door open for imports to get a toe hold in the US. This proved to be the company's undoing. However, to be fair, expansion to meet a temporary demand spike could have been a corporate poison pill as well.

 

 

The company is defunct, but someone ended up with the brand name and is now marketing pac-rim imports under the Harmony name.

[milod]

Some of the higher-end Harmony guitars were not bad at all.

 

The Sovereign sounded pretty decent. I seem to recall there was even a version with hidden mag pickup under the end of the fingerboard, a volume and tone control on the top.

 

The high end 1950s archtop was not bad at all for sound and the construction was pretty decent. The metal bar bridge wasn't that good, but as a whole, not too bad. Half decent fancy inlays, too. Supercheapy trapeze. But it had Grovers! I also had a high-end Harmony classical at one time that played rather well.

 

Thing is, they also had a lotta low end stuff. The finish tended to be horrid on those, as well as hardware. I thought their necks tended to be of the baseball bat variety on all of 'em, but frequently the sound was pretty decent and they were strongly built for real life.

 

At the time the "cheap imports" were so bad that most I saw weren't even an option. I saw one $150 steel string - yup, in 1963 $150 was a lotta cash - that had a neck so bowed you could have used the guitar for archery purposes.

 

m