Official Luthiers Forum!

I have a friend who's asked me to work on one of these. I've never worked on this or a banjo before. He says that the neck keeps moving, the action and tuning aren't stable. He believes it has something to do with the center rod that supports the neck and body. Sounds logical to me. Any advice on diagnosing/fixing the problem, if and when I get my hands on the thing?

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Common banjo problem. The neck joint to the rim is probably loose. Just like guitars, the wood dries out and joints get loose. After you get it in your hands, you'll see what the problem is.

I always disliked working on banjos for just this reason.
Replacing heads was a pain in the butt, too.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

The biggest cause of that problem from what I've seen is a neck joint that doesn't really fit perfectly. True, banjo necks will loosen up as the wood moves, but the banjos I've seen with really bad staying in tune issues have had less than perfect neck joints. If the neck is only contacting the rim with a small surface area, any movement of the wood is accentuated. Also, guitjos have a lot more string tension on them than regular banjos, and this makes the problem even worse.

A lot of the really classic, high-end old banjos have horrible neck fits--they're frequently undercut in the middle so that the neck looks like it's mating with the rim really tightly, but is in fact only contacting the rim around the edges of the heel. A lot of them look like they were fit with a hatchet when you take the necks off. It's amazing how much tone is lost that way, along with stability of the neck joint....

Dave

So, can you just tighten this up somehow, or is the fix a little more involved?

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.