eugene1978 - Posted - 12/30/2011:  15:30:15

Part I - The Journey Begins

So I just received my new Romero banjo on Christmas Eve and yes, it was the best Christmas ever! See below and romerobanjos.com/11291/11291.html

The slothead is my second Romero (the first was inspired by a fretless Fairbanks in Gura/Bullman.  See pics 3 and 4 below and romerobanjos.com/10234/10234.html for more. But getting this banjo, which is really my dream banjo, got me thinking…I have sent so many superlatives to Jason and Pharis over the last three years, I figured it would be better to share some of my thoughts and feelings about this new banjo here on the Hangout so everyone could benefit from seeing how these wonderful people ply their craft and bring joy to banjo players and the world. So instead of saying to them yet again “you guys are brilliant designers/builders/artists…the banjo is incredible…etc etc,” I’ve put a post together not just about the honeymoon that is receiving a new banjo (and especially a new Romero) but about the process of dreaming about that banjo as you wait for your build slot, the creation of that banjo with Jason and Pharis, and then of course, the delivery!

Edited by - eugene1978 on 12/30/2011 15:37:09

eugene1978 - Posted - 12/30/2011:  15:30:42

Part II - Old Banjos Inspire

I love old banjos, especially the curious aesthetics of certain less popular makers. I don’t believe you can be a banjo lover and not admire the craft of the Fairbanks/Vegas (and old Icilio Consalvo!) but I suppose I’m a bit bored by all the imitations (often slavish) of a few sets of inlays (Griffins for instance). So, when I browse Tsumura or Gura/Bollman, I definitely gravitate towards Luscombs, Bay States, and others. Despite their peculiar inlay work – the Buckbee sourced banjos have always especially intrigued me. I love their use of metal and pearl and their utterly strange and eccentric aesthetic choices. As such, one banjo in Tsumura really grabbed me from the start. A presentation Buckbee.Now, of course, it is quite reminiscent in certain dimensions of a Whyte Laydie No. 7 pattern – I think of the peghead as Buckbee’s version of the exploding fern 7 inlay. So that Buckbee formed the germ of the idea.

Edited by - eugene1978 on 12/30/2011 15:36:28

eugene1978 - Posted - 12/30/2011:  15:35:21

Part III - H.C. Dobson



My Dobson obsession began at Merlefest in 2004. The Ome folks had a used Johannes Bonefaas for $2500 (yes, I’ve kicked myself MANY times for not buying that one!). Some young guy – a very good old time player – was just making it roar. Thus began a long and winding trail to the fall of 2008 when Hangout member Maxmax was selling his RS 011, a custom ordered one with no headstock burn-inlay and a the fifth string tuner at the fifth fret. A big envelope of cash exchanged in New York City and it was mine! I loved that banjo and everyone who saw it said how cool it looked but I never found it very easy to play - something about the neck just did not agree with me. The aesthetics were extremely cool and I still marvel at Johannes’ building skill BUT BAS continued. Part of what made me sell that banjo was playing one of Jason and Pharis’ Winter 2008 LE Banjos at The Music Emporium – they had two at the time – both brilliant. Check em out:



romerobanjos.com/limited-editi...2008.html



youtube.com/watch?v=WuFiWBBxGlA



I probably regret not taking the calfskin headed one home, but I definitely didn’t have that money at the time. So instead, I got on Jason’s list. I wanted something non-Dobson because I already had the Bonefaas, but the playability of the banjo I got convinced me sell the JB (to Hangout member J-Walk and I think he’s making it sing much better than I ever did).



Anyhoo, when 10234 was delivered in June of 2009, Jason and I shot the breeze a bit about Bill Rickard’s spunover rims and Dobson stuff in general. Jason indicated an eagerness to build off that foundation and I quickly decided to get right back on the waiting list.

Edited by - eugene1978 on 12/30/2011 15:35:48

f#dead - Posted - 12/30/2011:  16:35:05

Congrats, that is one sweeet christmas present for sure.  Tell us more and thnx for posting.  G.T.

StraitsBlueGal - Posted - 12/30/2011:  18:30:47

Wow, that is a thing of beauty.  And the Romeros are so cool - thank you for sharing.  I'm going to go back now and look at each of the slothead photos in close up...

eugene1978 - Posted - 12/30/2011:  18:53:29

Part IV – The Buckbee-Dobson Aesthetic



I could literally post hundreds of photos I’ve accumulated of Buckbee and Dobson banjos. Yes, not all of them are labeled H.C. Dobson. Certainly all of them don’t have the silver bell tonering. But, I like the aesthetic line running betwixt and between all these Buckbee and Dobson products. I especially like the continuities between G.C. and H.C. Dobsons, especially the fancy end of things. Somewhere in the midst of this I acquired one of the few and far between H.C. Dobson doublespun banjos. Mine has some very art-deco-y metal inlays. See pic 1 below (more in the photo album on my homepage). This (and a couple of H.C. Dobson ponys I came by during the waiting period) REALLY got me into the slothead thing.



So basically, I mixed and matched and meshed a bunch of pieces I liked on the basic template from the fancy Tsumura Buckbee. I loved the basic peghead from the blinged out pony Dobson on Bill’s Banjos…see pic 2 below. And yes, Bill’s site has the best banjo porn aside from the Romero Archives on the interwebs: billsbanjos.com/



But, like a lot of high-end H.C. Dobson, I felt it was a little TOO busy, so I took it down to just the torch. See pic 3 for the mockup. Anyhoo, then I spent a long time scanning pics, working in photoshop and just fiddling to come up with an inlay design I liked. That’s pic 4. The important thing was that I saw it as a work in progress. I knew Pharis would take my ideas and do something with them. But now I had a template for the aesthetics.

eugene1978 - Posted - 12/30/2011:  19:27:16

Part V – The Website of Dreams

Partly because they have the best banjo website in the business (romerobanjos.com/) – and all sorts of terribly attractive goodies – the waitlist for your build slot is both tormenting and tons of fun. Which design features will you chose? Which woods? Which of the awesome custom designed L-shoes? I think all this stuff really plays into BAS anxiety in a good way. Jason is full of expertise about which parts will contribute to what sound/balance/etc so that when your slot comes, you can hash out all the options. BUT when you’re waiting for your share of his attention, you simply get to build them all in your imagination! For me, that involved many idle hours of picking which banjos I thought looked awesome (well, nearly everything he and Pharis put together) and then fantasizing about how they would sound and feel. I definitely think it is impossible to go wrong and they’ve built in so many different idioms. But here are some of the pics I sent to Jason when we started getting close (early October). And here are the banjos I was particularly modeling my dreams around:

romerobanjos.com/09197/09197.html

romerobanjos.com/09175/09175.html

romerobanjos.com/10220/10220.html

unclekurty - Posted - 12/30/2011:  22:29:02

Great banjo. I see another in your future. You know they're going to come up with new stuff you'll want. I figure we have a couple of years left maybe before we're back on the list.

rubicon - Posted - 12/31/2011:  05:33:27

gorgeous congratulations

eugene1978 - Posted - 12/31/2011:  19:45:26

Part VI – On Deck



Then the day comes when you find Jason’s email in your inbox! He wrote me on October 20th: “Your banjo is coming up in the next batch I'm building, and I'm really looking forward to getting your new instrument to you....I plan on starting your banjo in just under a couple weeks, which means it will be done in around 6 weeks.” Ok, a brief digression. You’ve been waiting (in my case since June of 2010) and now he’s gonna build this incredible instrument, this impeccably-crafted, artistically gorgeous, amazing sounding, heirloom quality banjo, you know, with whatever features in the world you could possibly want, in under 2 months. It’s ridiculous!



Anyway, I was ready! I was interested in getting a mixture of inlay material (white MOP, gold MOP, brass, silver) since I’d seen Pharis do that on a couple of the banjos I especially liked. I like to tell myself that I’ll stop ordering instruments someday, so I wanted this to be my presentation Romero – all the stuff I ogled and drooled over in one banjo. I told Jason about my intentions (and about all the little specs I thought would be cool). We actually went back and forth a bit regarding the pot size. I tend to find 11” a lot more comfortable and felt like I already had a Romero 12” so I might like an 11”. Jason was a bit wary because he had not built a spunover banjo yet and wasn’t sure he’d be able to tweak the sound like the wood rims. Because of this, he felt the 12” rim would offer more sonic wiggle room.



As with 10234, Jason and I talked about the sound I liked, music I listen to and play. I told him I just wanted him to make me a banjo that would make me sound like this:



youtube.com/watch?v=9DKAz6HE5tg



Yeah, Jason said, first cover your bridge with ducktape and then just learn to play like John Herrmann!



Anyway, I definitely pushed Jason to try some new things with this banjo mostly because 1) I was happy to take the risk and 2) I knew he would exceed my expectations regardless.



As you can probably tell, I went into this build with all these ideas and provided a ton of pictures (most of which I’ve posted here) – some from old Dobsons/Buckbees and many from his own website – I felt like this was the easiest way to show him what I liked that he’d already done. So I sent him my rough mockup of the inlays (pic 1 below - apologies for the repetition). I mentioned to him that I was thinking about a Dobson style brass scoop plate. I wanted it engraved like the old Dobsons (pic 2 below), but Jason soon informed me that he didn’t do that. Hmmm. Then I found this presentation G.C. Dobson with a punched out scoop plate (pic 3 below). Cool! Jason and Pharis had just started punching really intricate designs in their brass peghead overlays. Jason agreed to take on the challenge. I sent this scoop plate mockup taken from the Buckbee peghead (pic 4 below). With my ideas in hand, Jason got to work on the big stuff and Pharis and I started to talk aesthetics…

Forgot pic 5 in my Part IV post - that is the rear peghead from the engraved scoop plate presentation Dobson (with full MOP fingerboard) - I stole the little pin wheel for the 12th fret inlay!

eugene1978 - Posted - 01/08/2012:  11:13:53

Part VII – Mockup

One of the things I love so much about working with Jason and Pharis is that whatever ideas you might have will be improved. In particular, it is very cool having an aesthetic idea and then having Pharis make it beautiful and intricate. The pictures below chart the evolution from my ideas in the previous posts. What became clear was that I had one too many inlays AND the scoop plate cut out should be simplified. What I particularly liked about what Pharis came back to me with was the incorporation of the different inlay materials in the mockup. What you’ll see below is the first set of images (with too many inlays and the options for the scoop). I wanted to make sure the inlays were a bit smaller on the fingerboard itself and we had to eliminate the inlay at fret 10 (I didn’t think it fit the rest of the inlays). Images 3 and 4 are the penultimate set. The only different between penultimate and the final banjo were that we flipped inlays 10 and 12. More to come…

eugene1978 - Posted - 01/08/2012:  11:20:12

Part VIII – Taking Shape

The other fun thing is when Jason sends you some pictures that actually look like a banjo. Just to respond (in part) to a recent thread about builders charging for photos, I did not order the photo package but these pics should indicate that Jason provides ample evidence of what’s happening – partly because he’s asking you what you’d like. I’m not going to post all of those, but the steps I particularly appreciate as a consumer. Here is the neck as I first saw it. And it’s already easy to get that huge excitement going!

eugene1978 - Posted - 01/08/2012:  11:40:51

Part IX – So Hard to Wait

Pharis emailed these first couple pics before the inlays were put in the board so I could confirm that everything looked the way I wanted it. I think, far from micromanaging, this makes you feel great and allows you to tweak little things at the last minute. This proved VERY helpful  with 10234 because Jason allowed me to tweak the Fairbanks-style strip inlays in the pattern I thought looked coolest. I didn’t make any changes this time because everything Pharis did looked so awesome. I mean, these are some FINE-ly cut inlays. Another pleasure of working with people who aren’t just great artists but SERIOUS craftsmen.

I’m just giving a little sampler of what the next few weeks were like. I just could not stand it when I’d have an email from Jason because it was becoming my dream banjo piece by piece. I wanted to play the darn thing!

harvey - Posted - 01/08/2012:  12:20:33

This is a lovely thread. Thanks for sharing

eugene1978 - Posted - 01/08/2012:  12:22:34

Part X – Some Details and More Pictures

Two small decisions needed to be made. Since this was Jason’s first spunover rim from Bill Rickard, even though I liked his ‘guitar heel’, Jason indicated in this heel pic that his regular heel cut would look a bit more normal. But, I had that on my other Romero so I asked Jason to try a round heel with the heelcap inlay. Jason was also a bit unsure about the scoop plate – how it would be attached (you can see he put screws in Pharis’ fingerboard mockups in post VII. Jason was also worried about how the scoop plate would function (esp. because we both wanted it to be a bit lower than the fingerboard). Anyway, he changed the size and location of the punch-out and then did it.

eugene1978 - Posted - 01/08/2012:  12:42:11

Part XI – Finish Line

Jason and I had decided to use gold Waverly tuners with ebony buttons to match the rim and inlays/fingerboard.  The Waverlys were back ordered but Jason used that time to get the scoop plate done perfectly, age the hardware (nickel shoes and hooks/brass tension hoop and raw brass spunover rim), and do some light engraving on the inlays. I had chosen Jason’s standard tailpiece (because I have the arched tailpiece on 10234). Jason installed the arched tailpiece by mistake but the picture allowed us to remedy that mixup right away. Anyway, this is the part in the process where it gets really hard to wait. I mean, the darn thing has frets, then it has strings. But there will be another week before you get it! One more post and then I'll stop my yammering.

eugene1978 - Posted - 01/08/2012:  13:15:20

Part XII – Done and Delivered

Then the banjo was finished. The rough pics Jason sent were just awesome. It’s one thing, obviously, to have something in your head, but it’s quite another when it arrives in an impeccably packed box from Horsefly, BC.  I don’t want to repeat myself but I think it should be clear to anyone who has held a Romero banjo that the attention to fit and finish is close to perfect. Not only that, but I think Jason and Pharis are clearly improving. Their work is so cleanly executed, the aesthetic work is so impeccable. As many on this site have indicated, we live in a golden age of banjo building. Sure, back in the days of Consalvi, things were pretty hot. But as Craig’s builders series makes so abundantly clear, there is a bit of something for everyone out there right now – whether it’s the old school engraving, the really old school minstrel stuff, or the truly custom work that the Romeros are doing – you can’t go wrong. It took me a long time to save my pennies for this one – and I sold 2 banjos and 3 guitars to help pay for it – but the finished product is truly an heirloom instrument.

I sent this email to Jason and Pharis (and yes, my wife actually said this).

Dear Jason and Pharis,

This belated response should be expected - it has been *so* hard to put my beautiful instrument down long enough to send an email. I have a much more in-depth response brewing (along with some sound/video recordings) but suffice it to say, your banjo has exceeded all my expectations. I love it.

I wanted to wish you all the merriest Christmas because the banjo has brought more than a perfectly crafted instrument into my home, it has brought joy into my household. On Friday, my wife and I were out running last minute Christmas errands (the banjo had arrived about 3 hours earlier). My wife says to me: "Why are you in such a good mood? I haven't seen you this happy in 3 years!" Pause. "It must be the banjo."

While I'd like to debate her happiness meter, I do believe I'm still glowing! Thank you deeply from both of us…

And since I’d promised Jason I would do this with the last banjo (ie, give it a review that it deserves), I spent a day of my vacation putting together these videos so folks could hear two different Romeros and hear them next to a vintage Dobson (another incredibly special banjo). Anyway, I feel honored and fortunate to own this Romero 11291, but that won’t stop me from being jealous of all the banjos Jason and Pharis bring their magical touch to in the years to come. They are a true gift to the banjo community. The most important consideration, in my humble opinion, is that they make beautiful tools for making music. And I like owning instruments that make my heart skip when I open the case (btw - a bump case silkscreened with J. Romero Banjos - awesome!) and that make me want to play and play and play. That is worth every dollar and every moment you spend waiting to get into the build process until you hold the banjo in your hands.

Blake

The Videos

Romero 11291 (12" Cherry - Spunover Rim - Dobson Tonering - Goatskin Head)

Open A – youtube.com/watch?v=QlB78NPEpU0

aDADE – youtube.com/watch?v=7YyYx2t1yXI

Dead Man’s – youtube.com/watch?v=mEQh9OhKyWs

Romero 10234 (12" Walnut - Honduran Rosewood Tonering - Renaissance Head)

Open A - youtube.com/watch?v=E2NMrWHTm1s

aDADE - youtube.com/watch?v=-kmhV3GhG2Y

Dead Man’s - youtube.com/watch?v=2_9-MBznLRI

1880s H.C. Dobson Doublespun (11" Walnut - Dobson Tonering - Renaissance Head)

Open A – youtube.com/watch?v=8NPzJD338oA

aDADE – youtube.com/watch?v=fSv7Q90icio

Dead Man’s - youtube.com/watch?v=8ClSLTps4sY

Edited by - eugene1978 on 01/08/2012 13:21:01

Shawn Hoover - Posted - 01/08/2012:  17:21:38

What a beautiful instrument, beautifully played. Thanks for the tale and tunes. That Dobson/spunover combo is wicked in double D and dead man's tunings!

I like your taste. I really like how the rounded heel turned out, the backstrap is classy, and I've always been a fan of the fret markers and tunneled 5th string on 10234.

And I saw your phone sitting there not ringing. Your friends and family must know you got a new banjo :) Enjoy!

eugene1978 - Posted - 01/11/2012:  07:33:34

Shawn - They knew I was in deep banjo meditation mode!
Not the first nor the last time...