I have a 1980 Rual Yarbrough Hearts and Flowers banjo that is absolutely beautiful! I have been wanting to try another tonering in the banjo. I tried a Huber but it fit too loose. The tonering that is original to the banjo is inscribed J. Janzegers 1976. Is anybody familiar with this tonering? Any info is helpful. Thanks!

Posted - 06/20/2009 :  13:35:28      

John Janzeghers & Sons used to build banjo rims and tone rings in the late '70s and early '80s, usually very good products AFAIK. I've got one of Janzeghers' rims (coupled with an older Sullivan no-hole flathead ring) in my old companion Old Funky, and I think it's a great combo. I have no idea of how his tone rings can be though, sorry, but other people on the HO posted about them in the past, I'm sure.

"If you''re gonna have a vice, try to find one that will keep you outta jail and maybe alive a little longer" - Alvin Youngblood Hart.

Silvio Ferretti http://www.scorpionmusic.com
http://www.redwinemusic.net

Posted - 06/20/2009 :  15:18:44      

I've owned a Janzegars and it was a fine tone ring. Bright and bell like as I recall. It was well made and back then there weren't as many options to choose from in terms of tone rings as there are today. It would probably still be hard to beat a Janzegars set up properly.

Bridgeman

Posted - 06/20/2009 :  18:14:45      

Aboput 8 years ago I bought a JJ banjo for a student of mine. It's sound compared eerily close to my pre war Gibson; definitely one of the best banjos I've played and that's a bunch.
~Julio

quote:

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Originally posted by silvioferretti

John Janzeghers & Sons used to build banjo rims and tone rings . . . I've got one of Janzeghers' rims (coupled with an older Sullivan no-hole flathead ring) . . . and I think it's a great combo.
Silvio Ferretti http://www.scorpionmusic.com
http://www.redwinemusic.net

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Posted - 06/20/2009 :  18:56:36        

Their rims were very good indeed. I have owned a couple banjos with these rims and they made excellent sounding banjos.

Mike Casey
and Gold Tooth Finance

Posted - 06/20/2009 :  19:58:04      

I bought a complete Janzegers pot in 1977 from an add I saw in the Banjo Newsletter. It was the tone ring,3 ply shell,hooks and nuts,tension hoop and 2 piece flange. I think I paid $315 for it. I had a local luither, Jan Bloom, build a neck for it and he knew Dennis Lake from Great Lakes Banjo and bought a top-tension reso from him to complete the banjo. I played that banjo exclusively until 2005, even a short stint in 1981 as a Lonesome Rambler with Larry Sparks. People would always ask what kind of banjo I was playing . I would tell them it had a Janzegers pot and they would remark at the quality of the sound. I don't have any marks on the tone ring but it has a stamp on the top of the rim with his name. I think he was one of the first to start making the 3 ply rims after Gibson had gone to the multi -ply junk of the 70's. I have always thought highly of his work. I would hold on to that tone ring if I were you!


Rock from Kalamazoo

Posted - 06/20/2009 :  20:43:46          

I had one in a banjo I had in the late 70s. It was heads above the Gibsons that were around then. I havn't seen one since.

Dave Jack

Posted - 06/20/2009 :  20:48:38      

Don Stover had a Janzeger tone ring in his banjo in the mid to late 1970s. Don't know any more than that about it. He told me it was destroyed by airline baggage handling (the entire banjo, his old #6).

The Old Timer, still learning!

Posted - 10/29/2009 :  15:15:15  

John Janzegers built my banjo for me on custom order in 1973. I got to know him moderately well during that period.

He was a Frenchman (actual name "Jean" and probably a naturalized U.S. citizen) who was living in Landover, Maryland, at the time and working as a machinist for a government agency.

How he got interested in banjo and bluegrass music, I never learned. But somehow while learning banjo, and learning about banjo players' search for authentic pre-war sound, he started searching out everything he could about the design and construction of Gibson banjos. You can imagine how time-consuming this was before the Internet. Besides taking precise measurements off of authentic pre-war Mastertones, he obtained copies of Gibson patents or other documents relating to them and of course read the writings of authorities such as George Gruhn and others.

He either made or had the molds made for casting his own tone rings to what he said were Gibson pre-war specs. He said that the metal he used was "Tobin Bronze." He also made his own 3-ply shells from rock maple. As mentioned above, this was in the era when Gibson and other manufacturers had gone to many more plies.

One of the earliest complete banjos he made for himself was not a total Gibson copy. It had one of his unplated tone rings and an uplated 1-piece flange with a hole pattern closer to that of a 70s Fender Artist. The neck and wood were curly maple, stained brown. The peghead inlay was also a copy of the Fender pattern (I'm pretty sure). I don't recall the fingerboard inlay, but I'm also fairly sure it was not a Gibson pattern.

Before he put together his printed catalog, he was doing a pretty good side business of upgrading people's banjos with his shells and tone rings and selling these to other instrument makers. That's the first thing he did for me. I met him in late 72/early 73 at the Red Fox Inn in Bethesda where there used to be open bluegrass jams on Sundays. I had only been playing for a few months at the time and had an Aria, which was sounding pretty quiet compared to all the other banjos there. We struck up a conversation and John got around to telling me how a couple of players in the room had his tone rings in their banjos -- one, a Japanese import similar to mine with a different name; the other an actual pre-war non-Mastertone Gibson. Within a few weeks he had put one of those combos in my Aria, for $122. It sounded great.

It wasn't more than a couple months later that I wanted John to build me a complete banjo. Unable to sell the souped up Aria for a price reflecting its upgrades, I simply pulled the tone ring and had John use that in the new banjo. The shell was not reusable because it had been turned to fit the Aria flange which was not to Gibson spec. I sold the Aria and for a total investment of $650 (case included) I had my new banjo that summer: deep red stained curly maple with Gibson flying eagle inlay. Single white ivoroid binding, not rings. Not an exact Gibson copy by any stretch, though at John's urging I had Gibson script installed. This banjo's neck, in particular, reflects some of John's personal design preferences. His necks were slightly wider and larger all the way up and down, probably to suit his somewhat large hands. He installed thicker nuts, thickened up by laminating a thin additional layer to a standard bone nut. I have since learned that the peghead shape on my banjo is not a perfect replica of the Gisbon double cut peghead. On mine, the ears don't flair out as much.

It was probably in the 73-74 range that John put together his "Janzegers et Fils" (Janzegers and Sons) catalog of shells, tone rings and complete pot assemblies. Despite the name of the business, it was only John. His son was still a little boy.

Some time around 76 or 77 John moved his family to Hughesville, Maryland, into a house that he designed. I was in touch with him a little. I bought a shell and raised head tone ring for use in a parts banjo I was trying to assemble myself. I eventually lost contact with him.

Banjo Newsletter fairly consistently misspelled his name "Janzegars." He told me that he considered using that spelling in his BNL ads.

As you've already been advised: hold onto that Janzegers tone ring. They are rare, no longer made and will never be duplicated.

Posted - 10/29/2009 :  16:26:38  

I sent John Janzegers some inlays and parts on 04-26-73 at his Landover, Md. address and I believe it was Paul Tester and Tom Morgan that got him started making wood rims....I had one of his early wood rims that had all the lap joints at one end and he later stagered them like Gibson did.

I too lost contact with him over the years.

BPorter

Posted - 10/29/2009 :  22:07:41  

Hi, I have been trying to get in touch with Janzeger. I posted some stuff a while back but had no luck. If you ever do want to sell it, I would love to buy it. I was told he got his formula by cutting and analyzing an original style 6 archtop ring and that he had access to goverment or military equipment to do so. My friend had one of his rings and let it go. I really liked it. I traded for a ring I was told was a Janzeger but it does not have his name on it. I figure it is probably real because that is not just a name you can reach up grab out of the sky and not enough people have heard of them. I remember my friends ring was dated 1977 and it had the little slashes through the 7s

Posted - 10/30/2009 :  02:47:56      

Well, if he was a Frenchman, and had his first name changed from Jean to John, then very likely "Janzegers" is the USA version of his last name: he spelt it "Janzeghers" in his ads on BNL, as evidently the "g" without the "h" would have been pronounced as a "j" in French. At any rate, Janzegers or Janzeghers, his rims were great, and I'll never replace mine, let alone sell it!

"If you're gonna have a vice, try to find one that will keep you outta jail and maybe alive a little longer" - Alvin Youngblood Hart.

Silvio Ferretti http://www.scorpionmusic.com
http://www.redwinemusic.net

Posted - 10/30/2009 :  08:28:00  

Paul Tester -- There's a name I haven't heard in 30 years. He refretted my Janzegers banjo after it was only a few years old. It had developed some rattling I couldn't isolate. I came across Paul's name in some article so I contacted him. As luck would have it, in his day job he was managing a renovation at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School just a few blocks from my office. Someone else I've lost touch with.

As for spelling of Janzegers, I don't remember there being an "h" in it, but it's been a long time so maybe I forgot. I don't know that John necessarily changed his name legally from Jean to John; I'd say he just used the Americanized spelling for convenience. He was from Lille in northeastern France, up near the border with Belgium. That's the Flanders region and I'm pretty sure he told me his family was Flemish. The name does sound more Dutch than French.

BPorter: My Janzegers rims have lapped joints. April of 73 would be around the time we were starting my banjo build, but I have no reason to believe that I've got the parts you sent him that month.

Ken

Edited by - Old Hickory on 10/30/2009 12:44:08

Posted - 10/30/2009 :  09:31:34    

Tom Morgan introduced me to Jean Janzegers in about 1971 or 1972. Jean (John) lived about ten minutes from me in Landover MD at the time. Jean had been making rims for two-piece flange banjos at the time, but had never done one-piece and needed one to measure.

One day I brought him my flathead no-hole style -4, 9471-1 and we tore it completely apart on his living room coffee table. Jean was superb machinist and measured every detail of rim and tonering with dial calipers, micrometers and radius gauges.

That day I ordered and purchased the first three of his one-piece flange rims copied from my -4, and they made superb banjos. I do not know for certain, but I believe his flathead tonering was a copy of the no-hole ring in 9471-1.

Jean worked for the Navy Dept and spoke of his belief that Tobin or "Naval" bronze would make a good tonering and that it may have even been used by Gibson due to it's availability as surplus after WWI. It is possible that this is what he used in the Janzegers tone ring. Only Jean can say for sure. In any event they were excellent rings.

Oldtwanger Frank
'Information not shared is lost.'

Posted - 10/30/2009 :  10:02:03  

John definitely used Tobin Bronze. I never heard of it except from him.

Ken

Posted - 11/02/2009 :  09:21:18    

banjomartin88 has a 'Gibson' parts banjo with a Janzegers ring.
It was a good-sounding banjo.

and then.......

he put a Sulivan FF rim in it, put the Janzegers ring back on and...........

BAM!!!

What a combo! Great bottom end and real good up the neck.



- = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = -
Bluegrass -- THE Original Country Music!

Posted - 11/02/2009 :  14:08:06      

quote:

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Originally posted by Old Hickory

As for spelling of Janzegers, I don't remember there being an "h" in it, but it's been a long time so maybe I forgot. I don't know that John necessarily changed his name legally from Jean to John; I'd say he just used the Americanized spelling for convenience. He was from Lille in northeastern France, up near the border with Belgium. That's the Flanders region and I'm pretty sure he told me his family was Flemish. The name does sound more Dutch than French.

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Edited by - RB-1 on 11/03/2009 03:20:01