Official Luthiers Forum!

A friend of a friend's husband recently died and she is liquidating his belongings. He had a banjo and a guitar and she would like to know something about them.

Here is the guitar:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/32219909160/in/album-72157679637120626/

The 8th picture shows a label that may be from an amateur maker, dated 1970. Or maybe he is famous? William Picken of Arizona.


And here is the banjo:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/32446120012/in/album-72157679637120626/

The headstock has "MAXIE" inlaid into it, but I could find no inner-web references to that name.

Any ideas??

thanks

Ed

The banjo.. Maybe possibly an old gut strung minstrel banjo? Looks like a short tenor 4-string scale length rather than the later longer ones. Check for evidence of a steel truss Rod of some sort.. If none - the neck won't take steel strings.. I would check that one on a banjo board... Though generally these aren't worth much.

The guitar.... Yikes!! Looks like it was an unfinished project...

Price wise - whatever you can get on eBay...

The banjo is a lower grade tenor banjo from the 20s or 30s. Steel strings, even though most banjos of that era did not have any kind of neck reinforcement other than maybe a center laminate. Probably a mail order instrument--the kind of banjo that kids took to college back then. Even really nice pro-grade tenors are bringing very little on the market these days, so I wouldn't expect this one to bring much in terms of $$. It could probably be set up to be a decent player for Irish music or something though. I'd put it on Ebay with a low start price and see what happens.

Dave

Thanks for the info - about what I thought

Ed