MIMF

Thanks, I'll give Bob's site a try!
John

Hi, Folks, I'm just a banjo-picker, not a luthier, and I need some expert advice. My old, cheap and cheerful, aluminium-potted 5-string could do with a new head. It should be a plastic one, as the banjo gets played in all weathers. So I looked at StewMac's homepage and found Weatherking heads with d...

Kids, the mandolin is an Italian instrument that was around long before Orville Gibson was even born...! Very true; but what is perhaps more important for the neck width is that in Italy - and also in Germany, where the mandolin is also a folk instrument - the playing style is usually melodic. That...

Hi, Barry, Before you go borrowing a guitar, try an online fret calculator here: https://www.stewmac.com/FretCalculator or here: http://www.harpkit.com/category/fretcalc.html . Note that they give the absolute distance from the nut to each fret - not the ratio from one fret to the next, which would ...

Yes, it is a mathematical arrangement. Basically, the tangents must be arranged like the frets on a guitar or similar instrument. That is, the first fret/tangent is set at a certain fraction of the distance from nut to bridge; the second fret/tangent is set at the same fraction of the distance betwe...

Toys. More precisely, Playmobil-compatible toys in wood and/or plastic. The first was a 30cm electric-motored steam launch for the Navy Personnel set, followed by a stockade fort (modular) for the US Cavalry and an Irish tower-house (with dungeon) for the knights and lansquenets. Then came a mock-up...

I agree that learning chords you can use for accompanying songs right from the start is the way to go! When I started out on guitar (actually the guitar-lute), I had a little song-book with words, melodies and chord names of lots of familiar tunes. In the appendix, there were representations of the ...

Thanks for the advice, folks! @Patrick (Happy Name Day, by the way - I'll be out playing an Irish gig this evening with two banjos et al.): Sure, you can't cast your nets too wide if you're looking for something as specific as this. @Paul: Good idea - a sort of "dry run" (but with water) t...

Hello, I have a small zither-banjo that could do with a new head. Not urgent - it's not split, it's just that the previous owner re-headed it rather untidily. It sounds OK. However, I recently had to replace a split head on an open-back banjo, and kept the old vellum. It split at the tone ring, so I...

A zero fret is normally not a part you can add to an existing guitar. It must be considered during the design phase and the neck must be constructed such to allow for it. I had one problem for which a retro-fitted zero fret was the only solution. It was an ancient, no-name, open-back 5-string banjo...

And here I thought that the British simply didn't know how to build banjos the correct way :twisted: :lol: Well, back in the 19th century, they did build ordinary banjos. But then a young American by the name of Alfred Cammeyer came over, pedling his new invention, the zither-banjo. Apparently the ...

This reminds me of a line from Shakespeare's "Hamlet". Hamlet's friends Rosencranz and Guildenstern have been pestering him to do them a favour, and he refuses with the words, "Though you may fret me, you cannot play on me!" Obviously a pun on "to fret", meaning to anno...

Stephen, You mean, like a Ukelin? No, the zither-banjo is functionally just another 5-string banjo, but with a few peculiarities. First, the short 5th string runs from the 5th fret under the fingerboard in a tunnel to the peghead, so there's no side peg in the way of your thumb when going up the nec...

Stephen, thanks for the tips! I'd heard that one about sloping the file to get a clear cut-off for the string. It was good to be reminded that the notches should only as deep as absolutely necessary. So a saw-cut is not optimal ... As to the strings: I doubt whether American folkies or OT folks woul...

Hello, Forum! I'm just in the process of fitting new bridges to two banjos. One banjo is an open-back strung with nylon throughout, the other a zither-banjo with nylon 3rd and 4th strings and the rest steel. I'm using bridge blanks, so I can cut the notches myself. So my question to you luthiers is,...

Thanks, Barry! I'll just try and see if I can find out how to post pics/attach files here. First, the actual 6th century Alemannic lyre that I'd like to replicate. For an instrument one and a half millennia old, there's not much guesswork involved in reconstruction: Trossinger Leier 2.jpg Then the B...

Greetings from an Irish folkie domiciled in Germany! My real name is actually John E. Dallas - like the well-known London banjo-maker of the early 20th century. There's no family connection, and I'm not a luthier by trade, but I do play the banjo. My first banjo was a derelict, no-name open-backed 5...