Junk Shop Frankenbanjo

[Andy Chase]

Picked this up for ten bucks today - If any of the collector/repairers here have any thoughts they'd be much appreciated.   The neck certainly seems fairly old, fretted for a scale length of about 26 inches.  It's joined to a 9.5"ish inch pot which has nondescript brackets of the sort you find on a lot of cheap import banjos from the 1960s and 1970s... but the hooks are too short and cranked down way too tight as a result.

The pot is warped and cracking in a couple of places (due to the hooks), and too small to accommodate the scale length; the bridge would only be an inch or so from the edge of the rim, leaving practically no room for a tailpiece. It's hard to tell, but I think the radius of the cut where the fingerboard meets the pot also suggests a larger circumference.

The pot (and possibly the dowel stick - although that may have been chopped off to fit) may have came from another banjo-like instrument; there's a '6' or '9' stamped inside, and screw holes where it was probably attached to a slightly wider neck. Somebody seems to have stripped the outside finish at some point; the inside retains a nice patina.

Meanwhile, somebody along the way decided it would be a good idea to pack the 5th string peghole with something (plastic wood?) and slather the neck in polyurethane.

For all of that, the skin head seems to be in great shape.... it's too bad the pot is pretty well wrecked and really won't work with this neck. The neck is pretty dinged up, but it's nice and straight, the peg holes (except for the 5th) look clean, and it ought to be playable if paired with a large enough pot.

[Bell Banjos]

Interesting. As if someone made a long neck tenor. The rim came from a who-knows-what. Too thin for steel strings but that didn't stop them from making it. Mahogany. Yuk. The neck used to be dark brown or black, probably from the 30's, according to the peghead shape. Or it could have been a more recent Harmony or Kay resonator monstrosity with a missing resonator. The too-thin rim could have been hidden with some form of resonator. Aluminum hooks maybe? I'd whittle some pegs, put old strings on it and hang it up. I had something like it and on the skin there was a lovely hand painted sexy cowgirl with boots.

[Phil]

Did they fill the fifth hole in with something?

[Andy Chase]

Phil, yes- I haven't tried to clean it out yet, but my guess is Plastic Wood or some other kind of putty/filler.

[Phil]

why  would they have done that for. looks like it a good neck just needs a pot.

[Paul Certo]

The plectrum banjo is a long necked 4 string. That may have been what they tried to turn this into. A Noknot tailpiece might work, but the cracked rim probably isn't really worth the trouble. If you dig the putty out, the hole may have been damaged when the 5th peg was removed. But if you want to use it as a decoration, you don't need to do anything at all to it. Just hang it up, and ponder who and why from time to time. You would have to lengthen the dowel stick to use it on a larger pot. Not impossible, but maybe not worth doing, either.

Paul