Got a loaner short scale tenor banjo

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ofajen

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It's a "Wurlitizer", meaning it was made by Gretsch. It belonged to the grandfather of a friend about my age (45) so it's seen a lot of action. The head is broken, so I had to buy a replacement. Not an abundance of 10" banjo heads out there, but I found some at Elderly.

This one has mandolin/violin scale, so it will have the same tuning (GDAE), which is convenient for me, since that is tuned the same as the middle four strings of the "Crafty" tuning, just up an octave. We'll see how it sounds once I have the new head installed and put on some fresh strings. The neck had to be removed on this style, since the fingerboard extends over the rim, and it took some doing. I suspect it hadn't been taken off in many decades!

Cheers,

Otto
 
Good deal! Hope you have fun with that. I'd love a banjo myself, but I'm completely new to the concept. So I'm interested to see how you fare with it. Enjoy!
 
That's pretty much an Irish banjo! Congrats. I play one, if there's anything you'd like to know just ask. There's also a lot of instructional material out there.
 
32-20-Blues said:
That's pretty much an Irish banjo! Congrats. I play one, if there's anything you'd like to know just ask. There's also a lot of instructional material out there.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip! Turns out this instrument is also known as a "banjolin". There is also a "mandolin-banjo" which also has fiddle tuning and scale, but is an eight string instrument with four courses of unison tuned pairs, just like a regular mandolin. The Irish thing makes sense, because my friend has Irish ancestors. :)

Cheers,

Otto
 
32-20-Blues said:
That's pretty much an Irish banjo! Congrats. I play one, if there's anything you'd like to know just ask. There's also a lot of instructional material out there.
Click to expand...

So Blues, are you saying an Irish banjo is a standard tenor or an octave tenor? A friend of mine bought a Vega tenor and had a 5 string neck made for it-the tenor had the tubaphone tone ring that makes the Vega banjos highly sought after-it's got a killer sound for bluegrass or clawhammer style playing now!:)
 
Last edited:
ofajen said:
Thanks for the tip! Turns out this instrument is also known as a "banjolin". There is also a "mandolin-banjo" which also has fiddle tuning and scale, but is an eight string instrument with four courses of unison tuned pairs, just like a regular mandolin. The Irish thing makes sense, because my friend has Irish ancestors. :)

Cheers,

Otto
Click to expand...

Oh, that's not what I was thinking of at all. I thought it was a slightly shorter scale than a conventional tenor banjo. I didn't think it was mandolin scale length. Still, with the GDAE tuning you can play lots of Irish stuff on it.



Anfontan said:
So Blues, are you saying an Irish banjo is a standard tenor or an octave tenor? A friend of mine bought a Vega tenor and had a 5 string neck made for it-the tenor had the tubaphone tone ring that makes the Vega banjos highly sought after-it's got a killer sound for bluegrass or clawhammer style playing now!
Click to expand...

An Irish banjo is four string, tuned GDAE. For all intents and purposes, it's similar to a standard Tenor banjo, but it usually has a slightly shorter scale length (generally between 21 and 23 inches as opposed to 25.5 or 26.75 inches) Sorry for the confusion!

A 5 string neck on a tenor body would be cool as hell.
 
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