BANJITAR!

[dubkitty]

with a neck that short it’d probably work better high-tuned.

generally replacing and tuning banjo heads is very similar to changing drum heads. you’d tune it by tapping the head close to each lug and matching the notes. that bridge doesn’t look screwed from here, but i could be wrong.

[Zork]

The bridge has a crack and sinks in in the middle.
Yes, the short scale - I think the sets for high strung guitar (readily availlable from D'addario) won't have a good tension. I don't know, maybe I'll take a 011. or .012 set and two extra strings for 5th and 6th string. We'll see.

[Zork]

I pulled it a bit apart to see how much needs to be done, researched some parts and was not so sure anymore if I really want to tackle a new project like this. It looks very cheaply made and I'm not sure if it's really worth it. Than I saw this video:
https://youtu.be/B5PK9MXDLJM?si=sNTl8y7DZC16JjV0
To see how much love and effort she invests in that old guitar put it all back in a different perspective for me.

[dubkitty]

sometimes “cheaply made” has its own kind of mojo that expensive instruments can lack. look at David Lindley’s decades-long campaign in favor of sixties Japanese and other odd guitars. i forget who it was that said “shit has its own integrity.” and often it’s not shit…i have come to love ancient Asian and Continental pickups in particular, and don’t get me started on the close-grained one-piece mahogany bodies. anyway, if it can be made serviceable and it’s what you’ve got you might as well have a whack at it.

[Seance]

It looks very cheaply made and I'm not sure if it's really worth it.

I have two darning looms of different sizes. I've used them to repair holes in socks or in old pairs of work pants.
Doing so helps build an appreciation of what goes into making a functional object that you rely on with the
expectation that it will silently but stoically keep you from walking around with your ass or elbow or heel hanging out.

In the past work pants were made out of quality material and were well-made and affordable.
Then workwear started to get made where labor was cheaper but the material and construction was the same.
Then the quality of the materials and the construction all started to go downhill while the prices went through the moonroof.
At which point repairing old, well-used pants that had been made out of relatively quality materials, started to seem more attractive than
continually purchasing crap that doesn't last more than 6 months only to repurchase similar crap that won't last more than 6 months.

The thing is... the more work you put into what before you saw as a factory-made, throw-away object, the more
you become attached to the amount of work that you've put into it.

If you work on a cheap guitar/banjo/whatever, then you might reach a point where you want to keep working on it
because it has already become a repository of your effort/thought/feeling/time/spirit. Or at bare minimum you will
have secured a way to teach yourself some valuable lessons (either about how to repair things or about whether this
particular endeavor is for you).

[Zork]

Wise words. Just the other day I complaint for a good half an hour about how crappy and shitty everything has become. Like everyday products. You buy it and before you know it stops working or is kaputt. Sometimes I feel a cheap product of yesteryear holds better than expensive stuff of today. My mother has plastic laundry baskets from the 70s that look brand new. If I buy a laundry basket, it breaks after a year and I need to buy a new one. Maybe this old banjitar is better than I think.

[dubkitty]

it's certainly an unusual instrument. i've seen a number of banjo-bodied instruments including most obviously mandolins and 6-strings like the one Neil Young sometimes plays, but never an octave banjo-guitar.

[Zork]

It's not specifically an octave guitar banjo. It has a scale length of 23.5" which is kinda short but in an usual range as far as I know so far. I just want to string it with 5th string an octave up and 6th two octaves up. I learned yesterday that it's called a high five tuning and is not uncommon.

[dubkitty]

that’s an inch longer than my Duo Sonic, which would be even tinier with a small banjo body. actual banjo scale is more like 26.5, and i saw a chart that gave 23.5” as mandolin banjo scale length. so i think it’s safe to say it’s meant to be uptuned.

you’re fortunate it takes ball-end strings. my electric bouzouki does not, which made it a lot harder to find the steel wound strings required for the pickups to work. IIRC i bought single GHS banjo strings from Just Strings.

[Zork]

[Zork]

Okay, here's where we're at:



I dismantled everything and cleaned it roughly. The pot had paint smudged all over the inside and I sanded it off. I plan to polish the outside next. All the hooks and screws got a nice Coca-Cola bath to get rid of the rust. Today I expect the new head to come in. I guess I'll start to re-assemble the body this evening.



The neck needs a bit more work. There was an ugly butterfly thing glued to the front of the headstock and the solvent has damaged the laquer very badly, so I sanded it to bare wood. I ordered a sheet of creme mother of toilet seat material for acoustic guitar pickguards to cover the headstock. I always liked that look on old Stellas and recent Gretsch guitars and it would be quite fitting here. Maybe I'll just spray paint it black again, though. I first need to see it in person. The neck was attached to the coordinator rod with not one but two broken screws. Like someone just hammered another screw in after the first one broke off which apparently caused the second one to snap, too. It took me about an hour to get that mess out. I drilled a clean hole afterwards and will glue a dowel, then redrill and hope for the best. I already have a nice set of used tuners I found online for a good price. So slowly we're heading towards success.

[Zork]

Looks like I ordered the wrong size head.

[dubkitty]

can you return it?

[Zork]

Yes, I got it from thomann. No problem.

[dubkitty]

if it was me i’d have done something dumb and avoidable to make it unreturnable LOL. i have no idea whatsoever about choosing banjo heads other than that i figured if i got a banjo i’d get the synthetic hide head for a more rustic sound and appearance. it seems like some banjoists never change the head…i saw a photo of Bill Keith the other day and the head coating on his banjo was completely worn away on much of the bass side from constant battering from his thumb and finger picks. so i guess the bright side here is that you shouldn’t have to do it more than once.