My custom built banjo
This started off in life as a Supertone plectrum banjo, sometime in the 1920's. A friend of mine had begun it's reconstruction by converting it from a 16 bracket to a 30 bracket. He repainted the pot, and had 1/16" brass rolled to fit the inside. He had Jimmy Cox (banjo maker extraordinaire) make a brass tension hoop for it, and then installed a Waverly Fiberskyn head. He brought it over to my house one night, and once I saw it, I politely informed him that I was going to GET that banjo away from him. I ended up swapping him a nice old birds eye maple tenor banjo for it. He contacted Jimmy Cox for me, and asked about a 5 string neck. Turns out Jimmy had one of the first 5 string necks he had ever built sitting on the shelf. One of his customers owned an early Cox (Gibson) Mastertone copy, and wanted it converted to a plectrum. Jimmy told them it would be cheaper for him to just make them a new plectrum neck. I bought this neck from Jimmy for $40. It was cut at the heel to fit on a Mastertone type pot with truss rods. I filled in the void with mahogany, and made a maple dowel stick. The resonator was blonde birds eye maple. I routed it for ivroid binding, and then refinished it to match the neck. I made the arm rest out of a piece of walnut, and inlaid three brass hearts, representing my wife and two daughters. I also made the arm rest bracket out of brass and aluminum. I hand made a walnut bridge with a bone cap, but it got broken somewhere along the line, so it now has a Grover bridge. I installed Waverly tuners, and a clamshell tailpiece. Sometime in the late 90's, I sold it to a local pawn shop, frankly because I needed the money. A couple years ago, I bought it back. It gnawed at me, knowing it wasn't "home". Since then, it has been on the wall, untouched... oh well.
Update!
In the summer or fall of 2005 I decided "enough was enough" with the paper thin rosewood fingerboard. I bought a blank (pre-slotted) ebony board from Stew Mac, fretted and inlaid it, added binding, and installed it on the old neck. I refinished the neck at the same time. I further decided to touch up some rough areas on the resonator, which I had bound and refinished back in 1991. Well, "touch up" led to stripping it completely! I then decided the birdseye maple was just TOO pretty to hide under a bunch of dark stain, so I refinished it blonde. I also found an old bridge I had made from walnut with a bone cap, which had broken a long time ago from my careless storage. I made a new bone cap for it and installed it. So now the banjo has a much more stable neck and therefore stays in tune better. This became a "back burner" project and ended up taking almost a year to complete. Not so much because of the fingerboard work but because of refinishing. I really suck at it and have to wait for months for the finish to harden up enough to buff. I finally got a hardshell case for it, so at least it won't gather dust while it sits for a year at a time...
