BANJOS

Banjo is the instrument which came to America with black slaves. It comes probably from Islamic tradition. Its wild development started roughly in the middle of 19th century. Original pumpkin corpus was replaced by wooden one, very frequently built from old strainers. Number of strings has settled down to five, instead of original four or three. During that times already different versions of chord tuning was used. Later was added a tension mechanism of the gate and the frets of fingerboard. In second half of 19th century engendered different modifications of tone rings under the membrane and those made the sound much louder and clearer. The strings made from animal intestines were replaced by metal ones. Different voice positions of the instrument came into being during the end of 19th century. New banjo plectrum arose during this period. In fact, it is a 5 string banjo without fifth string – which was needles for playing with plectrum. Analogical, banjo-like instruments grew at the beginning of 20th century, like guitars, ukulele, and the back resonant board is added. That time is also the time of appearance of tenor banjo and famous Gibson’s master tone construction – currently most used one. I am able to build for you practically any one of these banjos and for your imagination I am introducing few most common models.

OPEN BACK	OPEN BACK-VERZE TENOR	STUDENT	STANDARD
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STANDARD-VERZE TENOR	RETRO	STANDARD	OPEN BACK MAPLE
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OPEN BACK-"VEGA"
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