Official Luthiers Forum!

I have a pretty nice open-back banjo that I haven't played in many years. I got it out of its case the other day (thinking about either starting to play it again, or selling it) and looked it over. The neck has an up-bow in it, but it's not an even, gradual bow over the length of the neck; most of the bend is around the 7th fret. That's easy to see by sighting the neck. With a straight edge spanning from the first to the last fret, there's a .020" gap over the 7th. There is no truss rod. The action is quite high (I didn't actually measure it before I took the strings off). It's playable, but far from ideal. The neck was like this years ago when I used to play it, and I just put up with it. But now, whether I'm going to start playing it again or sell it, I'd like to do what I can to improve its playability.

I've thought about taking off the rosewood FB, seeing if I can straighten the mahogany shaft, putting in a truss rod, and putting the FB back on (or making a new ebony one), but I'm not sure it's worth getting into all that. If I leave the neck as is, then presumably my only recourse for lowering the action is to put on a new, lower bridge. If anyone has any thoughts on that, including specific recommendations for a good bridge that's available in various heights - or input on making one - I'd appreciate it. I've never done any work on this or any other banjo before, so I'm pretty banjo illiterate.

The other issue is dressing the frets. There's enough fret wear that the frets ought to be leveled and dressed, but I don't have any experience "leveling" frets on a neck that's not straight. I can imagine how I might go about doing that, but if anyone's got any tips, I'm all ears. I would guess that those of you with many years of repair experience have dealt with frets on necks like this, whether on banjos or guitars that don't have truss rods.

Thanks!

_________________
Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

An obvious question I should have asked is what would be a reasonable amount of relief to have in a banjo neck? Although the "relief" in this neck isn't a nice, smooth curve, if .020" is within reason on a banjo, then maybe it's basically fine if I can fix the action with a new bridge and do a good job leveling and dressing the frets.

_________________
Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

Howdy Todd,

I'm no banjo pro but I am a banjo owner. I read on a site where a pro removed the fingerboard and planed the neck straight
then added a truss rod before putting the fingerboard back on. Also here's a good article on pro banjo setup technique.
http://www.pensonstringwerks.com/PSW/banjosetup.htm

I know StewMac sells banjo necks in Flamed Maple that still need a bit of finish carving for about $117.40. These are straight
and have the trussrod channel already cut.

May you prosper well in this adventure

_________________
Bill Hodge


One does not simply, own enough guitars!

I would start by asking what kind of banjo it is and do you want to play bluegrass (picking style) or old time claw hammer style?

For old time banjo picking I think I would leave the neck alone and get the action to a reasonable spot via bridge height.

My clam hammer banjos have a good bit of relief (I've never put a number to it but I can measure if you like) and a 1/4" or more string clearance at the 12th fret.


Louis

_________________
- Louis Freilicher

Oh No! Not another learning experience!

Thanks, Bill and Louis, for your input.

I play (or used to play, I should say) clawhammer style, and that's what I would set it up for even if were going to sell it. It's an open back banjo with a great old-time sound.

1/4" action? Wow. Interesting. That might be about where it is now. I think I'd like it lower than that, though. I play in a sweet, melodic clawhammer style, not a raucous, aggressive style. The action always seemed high to me when I played this banjo a lot years ago, but I just played it anyway and never gave much thought to it. That was long before I got into lutherie. If you'd care to elaborate on your reasoning behind the very high action, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

BTW, I found my notes from a presentation David Collins gave in Ann Arbor, in which he mentioned an approximate recommended relief on a banjo neck being .025". According to that, then, my neck should be okay.

I also looked at StewMac, and they have banjo bridges in four different heights ranging from 1/2" to 3/4", and they're only a couple bucks a piece. I'd still be interested to hear if anyone else has any specific bridge recommendations (I don't mean the height, but type, brand, etc), but I might just pick up two or three of different heights from StewMac and experiment.

Then there's still the matter of leveling the frets on a crooked neck.

_________________
Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

It's been years since I've worked on an open back banjo, but I believe most are made where you can make neck angle adjustments inside the rim. This would correct your action with the existing bridge. How is the neck attached? For relieve I've got .012" on my old Gibson. I play three finger style, with a pretty light touch. You might also try slightly damping the neck/fingerboard, and clamping a stiff board to it, flexing/bening it in the direction it needs to go.

_________________
I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

Todd,
Chuck out http://www.banjowizard.com/banjset.htm. There's a lot of great information here.

Good luck,
Chuck

Todd,

I build my banjos with around .010 to .013" relief at the 7th fret with about 1/8" action at the 12th using a 5/8" bridge, but .020 isn't really too far out of whack as far as old banjos go. As far as action adjustment goes--it depends on the banjo. Most dowelstick type banjos require a neck set to properly change the action. Some, like the old Stewarts and Weymanns, have turnbuckle style adjusters that basically warp the rim. Not really a great idea in my book. Coordinator rod style banjos also have action adjustment via rim warpage. It's fairly common to see people shim the tops of the necks against the tension hoop on the rim in order to increase the neck set angle. This increases the angle, but ruins any neck to rim contact (critical to tone and volume), so isn't really a good option either.

Most 19th century/early 20th century banjos were built with gut strings and a fairly high action in mind. When you put steel strings on these (and use a normal 1/2 to 5/8" bridge), the action will be way too high. If you go to a lower bridge, there isn't enough break angle over the bridge and tone/action both suffer.

So, I'd say that your options are probably (not seeing the banjo in front of me) to either heat press the neck, replace the fingerboard (and maybe add a little bit of taper to increase the neck set angle), reset the neck or try different height bridges and see if it makes any difference. Elderly Instruments and others carry a wide variety of banjo bridges in different heights. I either make my own bridges or use Rick Sampson's bridges--they are very nice for clawhammer.

Dave

Thanks you, Woody, Chuck, and Dave, for all your input. This is great. I'm gittin' me a real good banjo ejee-cation!

This banjo was made in the early 80's by an American maker. I won't mention his name, because if I did, I'd be too tempted to make comments based on my experience with him as a person, and I don't bash people publicly. Anyway, in spite of the character of the maker, this is a pretty good banjo.

It's a dowel stick type deal. When I removed the neck to see if there was a truss rod accessed from the heel, I didn't see any way to adjust or reset the neck angle, since the dowel stick appeared to be integral to the neck shaft and in a fixed position in the rim. However, this is Mr. Banjo Ignoramous talking, so if there's a way to change the neck angle or otherwise adjust action other than changing the height of the bridge, I'm all ears. I haven't yet had the time to really look at it and see if there might be more to it than was immediately apparent, and I may have mistakenly jumped to the conclusion that the neck angle is fixed. There was this one bracket and adjuster screw thingie, at the base of the dowel stick, where it goes through the rim to the heel, the purpose of which was not immediately clear to me.

Thanks again!

_________________
Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

There are banjos out there with the dowelstick integral to the neck, but they're not common, and most of the ones I've seen have been from the mid nineteenth century. But people still build them that way sometimes. It's really hard to set or reset the neck if it's made this way though.

The bracket and adjuster screw thing sounds to me like it's only meant to hold the dowelstick and neck tight to the rim, but I could be off on that. Another option for lowering action is to remove the neck, cut the dowelstick hole in the rim slightly bigger up towards the head (so the neck can move vertically higher, thus lowering the action a bit). You finish this off by shimming the bottom of the dowelstick hole to make it fit with a bit less slop. On the tailpiece end, you can use an L bracket or something similar to accomodate the new location of the dowelstick without having to re-drill the rim. Paramounts came this way from the factory. Here's a picture:


Anyway, this method isn't as good as a real neck reset, but it can be done without any permanent ramifications to the banjo, and is easy to undo in the future if you want to.
Dave

Here is a good source for banjo parts per chance you decide to replace something. My understanding is this is the largest Gibson dealership in the United States as well.

Janet Davis Music
http://www.janetdavismusic.com/instru.html

_________________
Formerly known as Adaboy.......

Richie Dotson has a lot of information on his site, including a tutorial on making bridges.
http://members.tripod.com/~banjoist/banjo.html

Dave,
I really enjoyed your appearance on DIY network(That was you wasn't it?). You make some beautiful banjos.
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/hb_musica ... 01,00.html

Kent

Thanks Kent--yeah, that was me on DIY. Doing the series was an interesting experience. I'm used to only having my trusty feline helpers in the shop with me--having a film crew (who liked to keep the lights low) in there at the same time took some getting used to. The whole crew was first class though and we had a blast doing it.

Dave

I seen that too. Very good. DIY doesn't seem to play the musical instrument series anymore. I wish they would. I also liked the woodwork series which they also taken off. Now it's nothing but back yards and bath rooms over and over.

Dave, thanks for all your very helpful info and ideas.

Darryl and Kent, thanks for the helpful links.

The Janet Davis site has a good selection of banjo repair/setup books. Do any of you have good or bad reviews that you'd give to any of these books, or a favorite that you'd recommend? If any of the books does a better job of covering open-back banjos, that would be a plus. Not only is my banjo an open-back, but if I get into doing banjo repairs, the local old time music scene is huge here; not much bluegrass.

I'm going to start a new thread for my question about leveling the frets.

_________________
Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

I posted this in my other thread about fret leveling, but in case any of you in this thread might not have read it and might find it of interest, I'll copy it here:



When I asked Richie about his setup, one of the things he said was, "It sounds better with the high action." His playing sure does sound great. On the other hand, one of the fiddle players in that band, who also plays banjo and is also a luthier, said, "Don't set your banjo up like Richie's!" when he heard me asking Richie about it.

Who knows, maybe I'll end up putting the 5/8" bridge back on, or even a higher one. It'll be kind of a fresh start for me getting back into playing clawhammer banjo, so I'll keep an open mind and experiment a bit.

Now, if any of you banjo experts are still reading, would you agree that I'd be wise to leave set the nut slots a little higher than I would on a guitar, due to the floppier strings on a banjo? I'm probably going to make a new nut.

_________________
Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

I set my banjos up with nut slots not quite as deep as I use on guitars, because with the floppy strings, they do tend to buzz. I also tend to use a bit more neck set so that I can use a higher bridge and still have a low action. I honestly don't know how Richie can play with the action as high as he likes it, but I know several other really great banjo players who also like a very high action. Not me--I have lazy fingers, but getting enough vertical pressure on the bridge is very important.

On the really old banjos like many old time players prefer, there is little or no set to the neck since they were originally designed for gut and high action. I think this may be the main reason that high action has become popular among the old time scene...

Dave

Thanks, Dave. Very helpful input once again.

_________________
Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

I was going to ask you if you had talked to Richie about it, he sure sounds great, but whenever anybody else picks up one of his banjos they immediately wince in pain AND sound crazily out of tune when somehow Richie made it sound perfectly intonated just a second ago. I think the super high action only yields an improvement in tone if you have the hand strength to play it and an automatic ability to correct the intonation problems that come from stretching the strings to meet the frets. It also works really well with his driving, aggressive sound, might not be as nice for more subdued styles. The other banjo player at the event who likes the crazy high action is probably a desciple of Richies, the blisters his poor students must get!

_________________
Jordan Aceto
Ithaca, NY

Thanks for chiming in with your thoughts, Jordan. It was a really fun time down at Castaways, btw, even though the turnout was not so great. The Evil City String Band had us hoppin' and hollerin' out on the deck. All the faces were smiling. The Talktomes were great, too.

_________________
Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/