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blindsniper - Posted - 02/02/2012: 01:48:47
Dear all,
I recently saw an old B&W video clip of Pete Seeger playing his banjo. This particular banjo has a 7th string peg and not a 5th string peg. And I though you only get 5th string pegs. Is this a standard?
regards
Ian
Cryo - Posted - 02/02/2012: 02:18:08
Pete Seeger's banjo was a five string banjo. It has a long neck with the fifth string peg at the seventh fret. See photo of another long neck banjo on my homepage.
Emiel - Posted - 02/02/2012: 02:19:36
The Pete Seeger banjo is a 5-string banjo with a longer neck, 3 frets added. It is tuned three half steps down. Deering (incl. Vega by Deeriing) and Goldtone (among others) offer long-neck banjos.
banjotom2 - Posted - 02/02/2012: 02:32:36
The 7th string peg is standard for long neck banjos. It's almost as if they're expecting you to capo at the 3rd fret, putting that 7th string capo in the 5th fret position as in a standard 5-string banjo. When Pete has his capo on, he can just 'tune up' the 5th string, rather than capo it... The longer necked, bariton banjos are often tuned lower and strung with medium gauge string to compensate for the longer neck scale.
A long neck banjo is actually considered a 'baritone' banjo, it has a longer neck, 3 more frets and is pitched lower than a standard 5-string banjo.
I owned a baritone, long neck banjo for a number of years and loved it...
Tom
blindsniper - Posted - 02/02/2012: 02:56:19
Thanks everybody, much appreciated
Andy McC - Posted - 02/02/2012: 03:52:50
quote:
I recently saw an old B&W video clip of Pete Seeger playing his banjo. This particular banjo has a 7th string peg and not a 5th string peg. And I though you only get 5th string pegs. Is this a standard?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is confusing terminology.
If you are saying that the banjo has a 7th string peg, it compares to a standard banjo having a 4th string peg.
The long neck banjo ends up fretted at the 8th fret compared to a tradition banjo fretted at the 5th fret.
Both these different pegs are above where they need to fret.
uncle.fogey - Posted - 02/02/2012: 05:45:01
By the way, it's an 8th fret peg, not a 7th, and Vega made another model called the "Excel" which had a 9th fret peg.
both models have a 32 inch scale and 25 frets:
These were the favorite banjos of folksingers Pete Seeger (of course), Eric Darling (who invented the "Excel model") Dave Guard of The Kingston Trio, PeggySeeger, Hedy West, Alex Hassliev of the Limeliters, Tommy Makem and others.
The classic was the Vegas Tubaphone, but Gibson made a model called the RB 180, ODE made one, and there were others. Many are collectors' items today.
blindsniper - Posted - 02/02/2012: 05:53:55
quote:
Originally posted by uncle.fogey
By the way, it's an 8th fret peg, not a 7th, and Vega made another model called the "Excel" which had a 9th fret peg.
both models have a 32 inch scale and 25 frets:
Thank you for that Mr Levan. I counted wrong.
brokenstrings - Posted - 02/02/2012: 08:00:16
Some say that people playing with you have to watch out so's not to get poked in the eye.
TonyS - Posted - 02/16/2012: 14:36:51
...and watch those ceiling fans!
See more on our Long Neck Group her on BHO...
phdm - Posted - 02/18/2012: 21:15:42
Speaking of Pete's banjo, does anyone have any information on Pete's "other" banjo? For the last several years, Pete has been seen occasionally playing another long neck - not his legendary home made, lignum vitae necked, Vega pot iconic banjo, but what looks to me to be a lighter weight version. It is a lighter colored banjo, with a reproduction of his original distinctive head stock and his motto stenciled around the drum head. It does not have his one-of-a-kind bridge, but seems to have a moon shaped or curved/compensated bridge. My guess is that he may use this banjo if he is outdoors in iffy weather, or if he is not up for lugging his iconic banjo, which is said to be a real beast of a banjo. Anyone know anything about this "other" banjo of Pete's? I have a photo of it which I would like to include with this post but as a relatively new member of BHO, I have may not have figured out how to attach photos successfully. We shall see....
Thanks,
Peter from Seattle
Jim Yates - Posted - 02/19/2012: 07:59:09
I'm glad we finally started saying, "7th fret tuner" instead of "7th string tuner". I was conjuring up some 7 string monster of a banjo in my head.
I believe that Pete's original long neck had two extra frets with the 5th string tuner at the 7th fret. He later added an extra fret and had the 5th string tuner at the 8th fret like the one in phdm's photo. Thanks for that photo phdm. I hadn't seen that banjo before. When we saw him in Toronto before his 90th birthday, he had the banjo with the strange looking bridge.*
*Although I've seen Pete playing this banjo for so long that it seems strange to see him playing (or holding) a banjo with another bridge.
uncle.fogey - Posted - 02/19/2012: 08:08:29
John D'Angelico made the original 2-fret extended neck in the 40s, as I understand, and I think Pete himself made the lignum vitae one - I understand he had a luthier fret it.
mikehalloran - Posted - 02/19/2012: 12:31:26
quote:
Originally posted by uncle.fogey
John D'Angelico made the original 2-fret extended neck in the 40s, as I understand, and I think Pete himself made the lignum vitae one - I understand he had a luthier fret it.
Correct. It was the Orpheum in the first Weavers publicity shots that received the D'Angelico neck. I understand that banjo was stolen and replaced by the iconic Tubaphone with the home made neck we old fans know so well.
phdm - Posted - 02/19/2012: 22:06:37
Mike -
As it turns out, the first long-neck Pete had extended by two frets by D'Angelico was Pete's Vega Whyte Ladie in 1944, just before he shipped out to the Pacific in WWII. The best recent article on Pete's banjos was in the Fall, 2009 edition of The Fretboard Journal (fretboardjournal.com). It has great photos of his iconic 1955 lignum vitae necked banjo which he continues to play today as his main banjo.
In part, the article mentions the history of the first long-neck: " "If I had a longer-necked banjo," he [Seeger] remembers thinking, "I could play it ['Viva La Quince Brigada'] in Bb minor - and I could reach that." It was an idea that was radical and elegant all at once, and Seeger acted on it quickly, dragging his Vega Whyte Laydie Down to luthier John D'Angelico's Lower East Side shop for what amounted to major surgery. "I got him to saw off the neck," Seeger says casually, more than 65 years later, "and he inserted a little piece of wood where two frets would be. He glued it together with pegs, I think, to make sure the glue would hold."...the instrument was stolen from the back seat of Seeger's care in 1949, while he ducked into a cafe to have a cup of coffee. "I never saw it again," he says. "Somewhere in America is a Whyte Laydie with two extra frets."
The article goes on about The Weavers - " .... they called themselves The Weavers and they made their public debut at the Village Vanguard in late 1949. By that time, Seeger's extended-neck Vega Whyte Laydie - which he had grabbed for the princely sum of $10, was already gone. ...Seeger...no longer can recall exactly what banjos he played in The Weavers. ("I think I had two of them, and I wasn't satisfied with either.") Photos from the era show Seeger holding a standard Orpheum No. 1 as well as a stretched version of the same instrument."
I am attaching a photo of Seeger playing the D'Angelico extended Vega Whyte Ladie, showing the two-fret extension.
Part of this photo was later used in a 1947 poster for a fund-raising concert that Pete and others were giving to benefit Peoples Artists, so it can be dated to no later than 1947 - two years before this first long neck banjo was stolen from the back seat of Pete's car and never seen again.
Interesting history.
Peter McKee - Seattle
Deaf Lester Crawdad - Posted - 02/19/2012: 22:19:50
quote:
Originally posted by uncle.fogey
The classic was the Vegas Tubaphone, but Gibson made a model called the RB 180, ODE made one, and there were others.
I used to own a couple of those Vegas Tubaphones, but then I moved from Vegas and now they're Redlands Tubaphones. 
~Pete
uncle.fogey - Posted - 02/20/2012: 05:08:58
quote:
Originally posted by Deaf Lester Crawdad
quote:
Originally posted by uncle.fogey
The classic was the Vegas Tubaphone, but Gibson made a model called the RB 180, ODE made one, and there were others.
I used to own a couple of those Vegas Tubaphones, but then I moved from Vegas and now they're Redlands Tubaphones.
~Pete
I've heard that someone has a Martian D-28.
mainejohn - Posted - 02/20/2012: 07:06:41
Fleming Brown was a 50's era folk singer who did some of the sketches in Pete's book. Fleming and I attended the same high school in Glen Ellyn IL, but we weren't there at the same time. He was fairly well known in the Chicago folk scene of that era, and was active as both a teacher and performer at the Old Town School of Folk Music. He is shown in this old photo taken most likely in the late 50's playing what appears to be a 24-fret "extended neck" Vega that, judging by the inlays on the fretboard and peghead, at some time had been subjected to the "surgery" that Pete described in his book. When I was in high school in 1960 I called him at his home asking if he had any banjos for sale as I was looking for one and used ones were hard to find in the Chicago area. He wasn't very receptive to my inquiry. Does anyone know anything about this longneck?
Deaf Lester Crawdad - Posted - 02/20/2012: 10:29:59
quote:
Originally posted by uncle.fogey
quote:
Originally posted by Deaf Lester Crawdad
quote:
Originally posted by uncle.fogey
The classic was the Vegas Tubaphone, but Gibson made a model called the RB 180, ODE made one, and there were others.
I used to own a couple of those Vegas Tubaphones, but then I moved from Vegas and now they're Redlands Tubaphones.
~Pete
I've heard that someone has a Martian D-28.
His name is John Carter.
Plays Barsoomgrass.
~Pete
Edited by - Deaf Lester Crawdad on 02/20/2012 10:33:28
Cryo - Posted - 02/20/2012: 12:35:27
quote:
Originally posted by Bart Veerman
Seeger fans might get a kick out of reading up on the funky bridge he used to use:
banjobridge.com/stu.htm
Thanks. Very nice account of what was done to replicate the famous bridge.
blindsniper - Posted - 02/20/2012: 21:59:34
quote:
Originally posted by Bart Veerman
Seeger fans might get a kick out of reading up on the funky bridge he used to use:
banjobridge.com/stu.htm
Nice bridge. I will not try to understand the physics. Nice work too on the the finishing.
spoonfed - Posted - 02/21/2012: 05:06:45
I think the seeger model is one of the best lookers vega made (sad innit ?) how come Luke Kellys seeger had proper banjo pegs instead of the usual guitar tuners ?
uncle.fogey - Posted - 02/21/2012: 05:27:16
in the period from around 1957 to when Martin bought Vega, the Seeger model went through an evolution of change from straight pegs to Grover Rotomatics, from dowel sticks to coordinator rods, and from amber inside veneer to brown vertical grain maple. The inlaid logo changed from fairly elegant to fairly clunky. The sunburst finish also varied from one to the other.
Weird Snake Joe - Posted - 02/21/2012: 07:44:56
I'm surprised Seeger's iconic bridge wasn't one that saw some scale of mass replication for consumers. I know some folks here on the forum took the leg concept to forge a bridge in the spirit of Seeger's, but the iconic bridge itself is one that only a craftsman must attain, and not just some dude with a credit card and an account with Elderly, Janet Davis, or Banjo.com. I can understand how FR-4 might make for a pretty expensive and niche, thus unmarketable, mass-produced bridge, but not even a fiberglass alternative?
mainejohn - Posted - 02/21/2012: 08:39:57
quote:
Originally posted by Weird Snake Joe
I'm surprised Seeger's iconic bridge wasn't one that saw some scale of mass replication for consumers. I know some folks here on the forum took the leg concept to forge a bridge in the spirit of Seeger's, but the iconic bridge itself is one that only a craftsman must attain, and not just some dude with a credit card and an account with Elderly, Janet Davis, or Banjo.com. I can understand how FR-4 might make for a pretty expensive and niche, thus unmarketable, mass-produced bridge, but not even a fiberglass alternative?
xnavyguy (bho name) made some about 1-2 years ago out of some synthetic material and sold them for about $10 each. I bought one to use on my "Seeger tribute" longneck (in my profile pic) but never assembled it.
Edited by - mainejohn on 02/21/2012 08:41:12
Roll Player - Posted - 02/21/2012: 09:04:43
The original Seeger bridge and xnavyguy's (Jerry Rabun's) replicas were both made of circuit board material. A banjo playing engineer in Austin helped fabricate the parts.
xnavyguy - Posted - 02/21/2012: 16:53:55
Altogether, I cut out approximately 30 of these bridges. I sold the last 2 last week. The buyer, after assembly, colored them black, using a permanent marker. I don't have any more cut out. If anyone is interested in building their own, I'd be happy to supply you with the drawing that was used to cut out these bridges.
stigandr5 - Posted - 02/21/2012: 17:18:05
quote:
Originally posted by mainejohn
Fleming Brown was a 50's era folk singer who did some of the sketches in Pete's book. Fleming and I attended the same high school in Glen Ellyn IL, but we weren't there at the same time. He was fairly well known in the Chicago folk scene of that era, and was active as both a teacher and performer at the Old Town School of Folk Music. He is shown in this old photo taken most likely in the late 50's playing what appears to be a 24-fret "extended neck" Vega that, judging by the inlays on the fretboard and peghead, at some time had been subjected to the "surgery" that Pete described in his book. When I was in high school in 1960 I called him at his home asking if he had any banjos for sale as I was looking for one and used ones were hard to find in the Chicago area. He wasn't very receptive to my inquiry. Does anyone know anything about this longneck?
That high school wouldn't happen to be Glenbard West High School, would it?
That's where I went! This news would make me an even prouder alum.
mainejohn - Posted - 02/22/2012: 11:53:19
yup...GWHS, class of '61.
...and regarding Fleming Brown's 24 fret longneck. I'm guessing Pete's original 24 fret Whyte Laydie was the inspiration for Fleming's Vega, as they knew each other, and Fleming's dates from the 50's, if not earlier. I wonder if the neck extension surgery on both banjos was done by the same luthier? I suppose we'll never know.
