Buzzard Mountain Blog

I got some request for a sound file of the Latest Custom Banjo to leave my shop. So I whipped up a quick sound file of me playing Lonesome John on it, you'll have to excuse the mistakes as my hands are cold and that's my story and I'm sticking too it.

Lonesome John on the Buzzard Mountain BM09005

BM09005_Lonesome_John.mp3

This is the latest custom banjo to leave my shop, it is a 11" maple rim with Rosewood Tone ring and cap and it features a short 24" scale length. The headstock design is a custom one designed around the customers love of Kayaking, so it is shaped after his favorite paddle. The headstock inlay is a Chakana or Inca Cross done in Abalone shell and gold MOP. The Rosewood in the picture is still very orange in color, over time (the next few months) it will naturally darken to a rich tobacco brown.

Here are a few pictures:

I recently got in a couple of old banjos into my shop for a general fix up, both of these were so interesting that I thought I would post some pictures of them.

The first one was an old Supertone banjo, nothing really special as there are hundreds of these floating around. What was interesting about this one is that someone in the past had removed the mother of pearl dots and replaced them with mother of pearl shirt buttons. This banjo just needed a set-up and neck adjustment, so I didn't do much work on it.







The next banjo is a short scale banjo, it has a scale length of 24 - 11/16". It has a skin head and violin friction peg tuners. It's a very nice little banjo and plays wonderfully. It was built by Thompson & Odell and is labeled "Artist Banjo made by Thompson & Odell Co Boston" and from my research it dates to approx. 1890's. This banjo just needed a neck adjustment and a little set-up.









I love visiting with these old banjos, it's a great opportunity to learn how they were built and designed back in the old days.

I recently finished up another neck project for a customer who had an old spunover banjo that belonged to his grandfather. This was a fun project and the neck turned out great on this old banjo. The rim had been refinished by it's owner, but the old neck was in pretty bad shape. Amazingly it was an almost Identical neck to the one that was on the old Gibson pot. These two banjos came to me from two different parts of the country, I wish I knew who made these necks!

Here are a few images of the old necks on this one and the Gibson.




Here is the new neck on this wonderful old banjo