![]() ![]() Playing banjo well is all about economy of motion - too much hand movement takes too much time so it limits the tempo. With a full length fifth string the highest notes are readily available from a normal position closer to the peghead. Wish I'd started learning 50 years earlier when my brain was more pliable.Ī full length fifth string can be a really useful innovation because with a standard five string to get up in the highest range of notes you've got to go way up the neck (towards the pot) on the 1st string (the one closest to the floor) and that's awkward when most of the playing is done towards the peghead end of the neck. I'm a String Bean fan because he played clawhammer style like I tried to learn. I bet is String Bean was still alive he could make it be a different instrument the way he liked to play way up on the neck as he did with the song run little rabbit. Will having the 5th string going full length be one of those things that in reality turns the banjo into a completely different instrument like 8 strings on a guitar does? in tune or drastically out of tune he could make some appeasing sound come out of them. Unless your name was Roy Clark then it really didn't matter since he could and did play just about anything with strings. My dad could play some but his noise maker of choice as he called them, was a steel guitar.Īnyway I understand that different designs of any instrument can change the tone quality as well as the method of playing, having one in tune is probably the single most important thing about them. Not being an instrumentalist of any kind the only musical instrument I ever tried to learn to play was the slide trombone for a couple of years while in middle school. What's the best pickup on a banjo? An F-150. These are the best pics I have of it and I'd take more but the friend I've loaned the banjo to is holding onto it with a near death grip. There's a few things I'll do differently on my next one but all things considered I think it's a success. The peghead inlay is a turquoise man in the crescent moon wearing Ray Charles sunglasses. The "nut" on it is just a strings spacer and the fret immediately below it is the actual zero fret. The tuner knobs were made from some rosewood violin pegs that I cut off and transplanted onto the tuners. The neck is mounted to the rim using a barrel nut in the neck heel and a long piece of all thread through the rim inside a hollow spacer and the action can be easily adjusted but I generally set banjos up with the lowest action possible. The fifth string dives under the fretboard at the fifth fret and continues on to the peghead where its tuner is located through a stainless hypodermic tubing tunnel and this removes the fifth string tuner from the neck and this aspect coupled with a shorter scale length that puts the upper frets closer together and a wide nut width makes this banjo effortless to play. I used guitar tuners with worm gears so that they don't slip like planetary tuners and the banjo stays in tune but it still has the appearance of traditional tuners. I made it from a stick of tiger maple with a rosewood fretboard, bindings and peghead overlay. It's a slot head neck with a tunneled fifth string and an integral zero fret. Glue is not necessary in a correctly tapered hole.Here's a replacement neck that I made for a Recording King 5 string open back banjo. Splines and a small "fin" hold the peg firmly and prevent rotation in the neck. This tuner requires a tapered peghole in the banjo neck (see our 5th Peg Reamer). Vintage Pearloid is semi-translucent and has the look of early plastics that compliments vintage hardware.Black gives a clean, contemporary style to your banjo.Cream has a vintage-correct look for many banjo styles.They're lightweight and add a custom look to your banjo. Ebony knobs are machined from real wood. ![]()
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