Americas instrument

[Steve Jeter]

 Been doing some more reading in this book.  I am understanding , that gourd banjos were it until the 1850,s. Is this correct?

Also that grain measure or cheese box , or wood made to resemble these started early 50ish and , shortly there after came geared tuners.   The geared tuners surprised me mostly.  Am I understanding this correctly?   This is really interesting.  it feeds my love of history and new love of this instrument. I kinda feel like I want to know it better .

 I am certainly ready to be corrected, so I can know and learn.

[John Masciale]

Gourd banjos were still around in the 1840s, but I would say it was the 1840s were when the wooden hoop really came into fashion for the following reasons:

 

1.  White players were regularly playing in public venues, requiring a sound loud enough to carry out to a large audience.

2.  Boucher and others started mass producing banjos, all of which had wooden hoops.

3.  The banjo players depicted on sheet music covers at this point were all playing wooden hoop banjos.

 

It was also in this time frame that the wound bass string was added.

 

[Steve Jeter]

thanks John, I had the wrong idea that  developement started 20 yrs later than it did. very interesting.  what abou the tuners? looking at some of the great pics in the book I saw Ashborns . etc with geared tuners.  theres one pic of a guitar  headed Ashborn that to me is so beautiful , unfortunately it had frets.

[John Masciale]

To my knowledge (and there are others on this forum who know much more about this than I) Ashborns were among the first banjos with mechanical tuners; most of the banjos in the time period we are discussing had friction peg tuners.  The pictures of the minstrel show musicians that I have from that era show all of them with friction peg tuners.