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If we have any dobro or banjo players, we could use you help over in the A/T thread: Ask / Tell > Ask me which weird musical instrument you should learn this summer http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3415486 I casually dick around playing clawhammer on a fretless/nylon-strung Appalachian banjo, but I really am not in the place to give prospective banjo players more general advice. And I've messed with dobro (and put nut-risers on plenty of junk guitars to make them usable slide guitars), but again really not my forte. We've been aiming for this semi-format of a brief description, pros/cons, difficulty, price, a few motivational pics and some cool clips. The audience isn't so much noob players so much as new musicians, or existing musicians branching out, who are considering taking up an unusual instrument. Hope to see some banjo and dobro goons drop in, as well as anyone else who plays anything unusual (do we have any experienced autoharpists). The thread is weak on bluegrass thus far (a little dulcimer and a little mandolin), so thought here would be a good place to pop in.
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Jun 14, 2011 06:26
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Roctor posted:I'm a bit of a snob though as somebody who grew up playing classical instruments and only recently got into bluegrass. Maybe these vets will say "just pick up one for $50 from a pawn shop and it'll be fine". At one point on Banjo Hangout where folks had gotten into telling total noobs to save up for a $1500 custom clawhammer banjo with a 6-month waitlist, someone popped in with a comment along the lines of "most of the banjo greats of clawhammer did most of their playing on banjos that were probably shoddier than a $200 made-in-China banjo, and somehow they got by." Don't get me wrong, I like having decent gear, and there are some failings (bad intonation, high action, etc) that make a cheap instrument nigh-unplayable, but there is a happy medium of cheap stuff that works decently, especially on the used market.
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Jul 9, 2011 00:35
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niff posted:right, so i am convinced that i will be getting a 5 string banjo some time in 2013. i am a competent guitarist and better bassist, so it seems like a fun instrument to throw into the mix. Are you planning to do clawhammer (more Old Time) or Scruggs (bluegrass) style playing? Not from your area, but checked on Banjo Hangout (the main banjo forum) and they have a NZ Hangout blog there, and a scattering of Kiwi banjoists. The blog is run by NZSteve, who appears to work for Artiste Banjos up by Napier in southeast NZ. They have a house-brand "Artiste" 5-string for NZ$325 (US$270), Savannah for NZ$425, and their cheapest Gold Tones are NZ$595 (US$490). The Artiste is a local label (presumably an Asian import with QC check in-house), so there's only one review up for it on BH, but the buyer seems generally pleased for the price. The Savannah I've seen in the US, and the SB-100 is nothing fancy but seems to get decent reviews. Gold Tone is the nicest one I'm seeing on that store and on TradeMe; "Gold Tone vs. Deering Goodtime" has been discussed to death on BH so threads worth reading there, but basically the gist is Good Time is a well-built affordable banjo, and the Deering is a quality banjo made affordable, so it's a little apples-oranges. I glanced at eBay Australia, and Deering Goodtime (a default recommended starter banjo in the US) runs close to AU$1000 for a banjo that runs $400 new in the US. I don't know how terrible shipping and customs to NZ is, but I'd be surprised if it's not just cheaper to buy one from California and have it shipped. How terrible is shipping/customs anyway?
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Dec 26, 2012 08:45
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zamiel posted:Hey there Banjo thread!! I saved this banjo from the garbage and was wondering if it's even worth my time. It's a Harmony tenor banjo; Harmony made all kinds of instruments from 1892-1975, and generally solid if clunky. Is the skin natural hide, or plastic? That might help date it as well. The pot, as you note, is plastic, so that should make for a nice lightweight open-back. They're not particularly rare or valuable (maybe $100 for an open-back), but properly set-up with the head in good shape and a straight neck, should be a totally satisfactory starter/knockaround instrument. The main thing, as Loaf32 implies, is this is not a banjo for bluegrass or Old Time. The tenor is most commonly used in Irish traditional music, or in jazz (mainly Dixieland jazz). Here's an example of Irish on tenor banjo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRa6l5wLXxA. It's very close stylistically to mandolin, or just the plucked equivalent of playing fiddle tunes. Here's some Dixieland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlkgArLFe0Y. A lot more chordal and popping. Just for kicks, here's someone playing along with The Offspring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umjM1a_nHAY The instrument isn't totally limited to those uses, if you have some other genre you're interested in playing on it, pitch it here and we can let you know how feasible it is. Just be advised that a four-string and five-string banjo are different creatures, so just don't use 5-string playing as your goal on a 4-string. If you're interested in Irish, we have a number of folks playing Irish music in the A/T "weird instruments" thread if you want to pop in there. Otherwise this is probably the thread to throw out any other ideas. When you buy new tenor strings, bear in mind there are a few totally different tenor banjo tuning options (mainly GDAE, CGDA, and DGBE), so it's best to figure out what genre you want to play before buying strings. Also important: do you have any previous background in string instruments? If you have a background in the violin family, GDAE tuning could be really easy. If you have guitar or ukulele background, DGBE is really easy. niff posted:i really like the look of the Recording King RK-OT25 but i think it is just the finish and description selling me as i've never picked it up yet. it is double the price of the Savannah, but i assume without any technical issues. Even with the NZ-markup, I would just be wary of spending US$700 on a Recording King; that's an old US name sold off and now applied to Asian-made banjos. Not sure if that RK model is Chinese or Korean made. Granted, these days both those countries make some decent music gear, so I hate to sound arbitrarily nationalist or anything, but I'm always wary paying new prices for brands without a long lineage. The RK price is probably what you'd pay for a Deering Goodtime with the ~45% markup you mention, and there are a body of folks on BH who like the RK as much as or more than the US-made Deering. So far as quality, I'd glance around BH for the Goodtime vs. RK vs. Gold Tone threads; here's one such recent comparison: http://www.banjohangout.org/topic/245929 The mixmaster actually looks kind of cool, but I'm no expert on rebuilt banjos. If it is everything the seller says it is, it might not be a bad option, especially if you can play it in person and see if you like it. If the parts are solid, it has a straight neck with truss rod, is properly set up for an actual serious player, etc. that looks promising. It doesn't appear to have a scooped neck (not totally mandatory or anything), and he doesn't mention what kind of head it has; I'd want to know about the head a bit to know whether it might need replacing, is hide or synthetic of a good brand, etc. But it does look interesting, and the price not unreasonable if we expect a 50% markup on banjos in NZ. Again no expert but I could imagine that asking US$400 here. And the price is just over twice what the "NZ house brand" Artisan costs, and it's probably well over twice the banjo if the seller is speaking straight. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Dec 27, 2012 |
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Dec 27, 2012 08:09
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big business sloth posted:I've been really interested in getting to learn the banjo but I guess I'm going to have to wait a bit. I've decided I like the sound of tenor banjo for Irish reels/etc and that bowed banjo video is incredible, but even a $300 instrument is out of my price range. Everything is really poo poo any less that there, huh? Yay, Irish tenor banjo! Cool instrument: relatively easy to learn, pretty versatile, and slightly uncommon enough to be a useful addition in sessions. Yeah, new ones under $300 (mainly Rover and Trinity River) don't look great, but used tenors under $200 sell on eBay about every other day. If you check out eBay and Craigslist every so often, odds are you'll find a good deal within a few weeks. In the last couple years on eBay, I bought one no-name open-back with hardshell case for like $125 shipped to Canada, needing a new bridge and strings ($5 each), and it was pretty good for that price. I also bought a no-name for $75, put a new bridge on it but found the action a little high. Neck seemed decent, so needed some fiddling with the bridge and/or nut. I wouldn't spontaneously buy a used one, but if you see one you like and post here asking about it, and/or check out past discussions of that make on Banjo Hangout, you can probably figure out a good one. So far as a few names to watch for, here's a BHO post: quote:
Note there are a lot of used Harmony tenor banjos on eBay as well, and while clunky those might be workable, and not too prone to neck warp from what I hear. You'll see more Harmonys in your price-range than any of the above. Tenor banjos aren't in style like they used to be, so there are plenty of used ones floating around, just takes a careful eye and checking with experienced banjoists online for input. Expect to have to do some basic low-skill settup yourself (cleaning tuners, putting on new strings, maybe new bridge, maybe adjusting action height). For half the $300 price of a Rover you should be able to get a good tenor going with some careful shopping. Note that a lot of people don't know what a tenor banjo is, so I'd just search "harmony banjo" rather than "harmony tenor banjo", which also increases the odds you'll find a deal that slipped past others searching for tenors.
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Dec 31, 2012 22:37
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big business sloth posted:Thanks for those tips. I checked CL and amazingly some guy has a Rouge that I could trade for (I have a dinky fiddle I'm not particularly attached to). I'll check ebay though using those other terms cause I know Rogue isn't exactly a bastion of quality. Unless it's a really bad fiddle I wouldn't think this a good deal. Not sure about Rogue tenors (they made those?) but a new Rogue 5-string is like $150. Unless your fiddle can't sell for $150 I'd say you'd be better off Craigslisting your fiddle and putting the money into a banjo. EDIT: In fairness, apparently Rogues are very closely modeled off of old Harmonys, but the vintage Harmonys are cheaper than the new Rogues, and there's some "survival of the fittest" at work where I'd trust a vintage that has held up over the years. A $100 vintage banjo that needs $50 of work will end up better than a $150 Rogue. As long as the neck is straightish, the brackets/rings there, and the body in decent shape, almost everything else can be replaced or jury-rigged (I've worked around missing tailpieces before). quote:edit: Phew! just inputting "harmony banjo" brought up these: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=harmony+banjo&_sacat=0&_from=R40 anything look good of those first few that are around $100? Not a banjo expert, but I'd aim for a Harmony around the $100 mark. I actually kind of like the plastic/bakelite body ones since they're really light and sturdy. Again, the main concern is straight neck, and I'll defer to the banjo experts here as to whether there's any way to really judge that on eBay other than sticking to buying brands known for having sturdy necks and/or truss rods. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Dec 31, 2012 |
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Dec 31, 2012 22:58
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Loaf32 posted:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Harmony-Reso-Tone-Tenor-Banjo-4-string-/170965245213?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27ce529d1d That one's got 13 bids, so a little competitive (though that could be 2 dudes nickel-and-diming each others' bids), but banjos of this kind pop up every single week, so the general advice holds and if you miss this one there will be a dozen like it this month. Got any comments for gauging how direly in need of a head change a vintage banjo is, or do y'all just proceed with the assumption that vintage banjos need a $20 new head just on general principle? I mean, I've certainly bought used banjos with totally serviceable heads, and maybe a couple that were just useless heads, but is there a good way to gauge online, or are the odds generally in your favour overall, or you just make sure to buy from a seller who appears to know music and can honestly say "head is serviceable"? EDIT: Once you get a banjo, the methods for setting up a tenor are pretty similar to those for a 5-string, so this BHO thread may be of use: Setting up a Bakelite Harmony banjo. And there are more like it, basic stuff like adjusting the head, cleaning/lubing the tuners, maybe but not necessarily upgrading the tuners/head/tailpiece. To paraphrase the general consensus I'm seeing on BHO: "a Harmony banjo is like an old Chevy: nothing fancy, but totally serviceable with a little work. As shown by some folks on the forum, a little tweaking and the right settup and they can really sing." TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jan 1, 2013 |
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Jan 1, 2013 00:19
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Odobenidae posted:I've never played guitar before but have a fair amount of experience playing a drum kit/other percussion so I've got basic rhythm down. Should I have any problems learning banjo with no other string experience? The answer is kind of a modulation of "how much does knowing guitar help me learn banjo?" Since the answer is "only some", by extension not knowing guitar is not a massive liability. And given that (arguably) the tricky part of banjo, at least clawhammer, is rhythmic, you just might have some advantage there. Plus whatever advantage comes with not having pre-conceived notions. I came to clawhammer banjo with lots of string background, and tried to puzzle it out from books but just couldn't figure it, until after a week or more things clicked and suddenly I could play dozens of tunes just off the top of my head. There was just an initial hurdle of the whole concept of its picking patterns being unlike guitar or mandolin. quote:Is celtic-style banjo playing limited to tenor banjo or can it be played with a regular 5-string? It really depends what you mean by "Celtic style". If you mean like for playing in pub sessions and all, it's not simply impossible to do, but it's not really an established practise. quote:5 string is generally tuned to an open G, whereas a tenor is tuned like a mandolin or fiddle (GDAE). I would think, though, it's possible, as with Celtic tenor banjo, you are playing with a pick, so you can probably avoid the high G string. I wouldn't particularly recommend that. If you're going to just flat-pick a banjo, you might as well just get a 4-string and tune it to GDAE, CGDA, DGBE, or one of the other established 4-string banjo tunings and stick with that. If you have a cheap 5-string that's was a great deal but want to play Irish, pop of the 5th string tuner that you don't need, and re-string it to an Irish tuning. I just don't see much benefit to trying to mimic tenor banjo but in 5-string settup. Setting melodic session playing aside, if you're talking more about backing up songs and ballads, folks like Tommy Makem and Luke Kelly did that for Irish songs. Granted, they did that not for Irish-y reasons, but because as folksingers they were influenced by Pete Seeger. But that's one way to go about it that worked well for them. If, by Celtic-style you mean "can Irish tunes sound good on clawhammer banjo?" then that's a definite yes. A really good book of basic Celtic tunes for clawhammer banjo is Perlman's book/CD set Celtic and New England FIiddle Tunes for Clawhammer Banjo. I momentarily thought it was out of print, but just turns out I had the same book under the older and confusingly more generic title "Basic Clawhammer Banjo". Lots of good Irish/Scottish/New England tunes set up for clawhammer. As one poster on Banjo Hangout put it, something like "It's not so much that it works to bring clawhammer banjo into Irish, but instead it works really well to bring Irish into clawhammer." If you want to play Irish tunes in pub sessions, you want to get a 4-string tenor banjo and learn it, rather mandolin-style, in one of the popular Irish tunings. If you want to learn clawhammer banjo, by all means learn clawhammer banjo as Americans developed it, and feel free to work Irish-based tunes into your repertoire.
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Nov 12, 2013 05:23
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If anyone likes clawhammer and also Shape Note singing, there's a YouTube channel of two young women (couple?) who have a bunch of great clawhammer tracks including some SN hymns, and clips with them teamed up with modern folk legend Tim Eriksen: http://www.youtube.com/user/banjoape Their version of "Restoration" is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5upf2Byf-_w.
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Jan 19, 2014 05:34
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UPDATE: Books are gone. They're in kind of tattered shape since I thought I lost them in a move, only to have a renter of mine find them in a box in my shed. So totally usable, just worn. A couple of them have CDs (fortunately stored in my CD album and not the shed), so I'll put those back in for you. I have five books total, and what say I'll sell them in a lot of 2 and a lot of 3, for say [/b]$5 per person/lot[/b] to cover shipping. Since these are next to free, I'd prefer they go to poor young goons, so if you're flush with cash, please hang back to let the kids get them first. If only one poor goon wants books, I'll make it all 5 books for like $8 total or whatever. Email me at my username at Yahoo if you want books. Here are the books I have, I think 2 or 3 with CDs and one with vinyl:  
TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Jan 20, 2014 21:55
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Claimed. vvv TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Mar 28, 2014 |
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Mar 28, 2014 04:22
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:I play guitar decently and play ukulele, and grabbed the Mel Bay book. Any other things anyone would recommend  This is absolutely the best possible mandolin-related way to spend $4.
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Jul 3, 2014 05:56
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my back pages posted:I'm not sure if this is the right thread but I figured y'all would know best. I've been a huge fan of this one band for ages. The frontman plays a banjola. I've always adored the sound but had the opportunity to see them live for the first time last week and man, I'm definitely in love with that banjola sound. Does anyone have experience with banjolas? Are there good brands? I see gold tone makes two version of the banjola and they're a solid banjo maker but I've not heard much about their banjolas. If I look up banjola videos on youtube, I notice some of them have a much higher/twangier/sharpersharper sound than the deeper banjolas I've heard play. Just for context, MBP is talking about instruments that have the string settup of a 5-string banjo, but a wooden body rather than a tensioned head:  So far as affordable models, Gold Tone is one of the few companies making purpose-built banjolas under that name. That said, there a are a number of makers who make a "wood top banjo", often quite cheaper than the GT. Not quite the same thing in that they don't have a harder wood back and a front soundhole, but at least might have a wooden top that produces a different tone from the skin heads. Backyard Music in particular has some affordable kits: http://www.backyardmusic.com/Banjos.html If your budget is in the middle $500ish area, a Gold Tone is probably your best bet. If cheaper, you're looking at inexpensive wood-top banjo kits, if higher you're looking at full custom in the $1k+ range. So odds are your budget falls into one of those categories.
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Dec 1, 2014 08:44
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Kvlt! posted:Forgive me if this is the wrong thread to post in, but I thought it was best. Not to be always plugging Niles' stuff, but Pentatonic Mandolin might be well worth dropping $20 on to get some insight into forming bluegrass melodic rifts. I just find the man's work to be genius overall. If you order it, from a dealer or from his own site, spend $5 to get his mando chordbook too. http://www.mandolin.myzen.co.uk/hokkanen.html
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Dec 11, 2014 04:26
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