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Will1717 - Posted - 06/02/2012: 03:51:36
We just completed a brand new copper spunover rim banjo as shown in the photos below. The rim size of this spunover is 12 inch diameter and it sports a 3 piece Dobson style maple neck with a two way truss rod (adjustable through the heel). The rim insert is cherry. Hardware consists of nickel plated components that we blackened out to give the banjo an aged look. We've also installed our new center grooved tension hoop and old growth maple bridge. The finish on this particular banjo is considerably different from what we normally do, as it consists of several coats of hand rubbed tung oil followed be a couple of coats of hand rubbed paste wax. Just got turned onto the use of pure tung oil, and have to say we just love the results. The tung oil finish produces a real natural look plus really adds to a silky feel of the neck when played. As per the sound? Wow! This has to be one of the nicest sounding banjo we've built. I normally don't like the sound of a Renaissance head on any banjo, especially spunover rim banjos. This particular banjo just sounds terrific with the Renaissance head! We got a short video of Arnie Naiman testing this banjo and will hopefully be able to post it shortly. The problem is that we shot the video with the camera rotated 90 degrees in error, and we now have a video and sound clip of Arnie laying on his back. Not too smart to say the least. Anyone got any suggestions on how to rotate a video view 90 degrees? The photo quality also isn't the greatest, and doesn't really do justice to the banjo in real life.
Also looking forward to getting our next patch of spunover rims completed as we just added a 10" and 8" spunover to our growing list of products. These will be complete with a new spun Dobson tone ring to match the new rims.
Bill Rickard 
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championofnorthhuron - Posted - 06/02/2012: 06:04:04
quote:
Originally posted by Will1717
We got a short video of Arnie Naiman testing this banjo and will hopefully be able to post it shortly. The problem is that we shot the video with the camera rotated 90 degrees in error, and we now have a video and sound clip of Arnie laying on his back. Not too smart to say the least. Anyone got any suggestions on how to rotate a video view 90 degrees?
Bill Rickard
Hi Bill,
If you have Windows Movie Maker I found this answer to the video rotation on a Microsoft Windows web forum... I tried it and it works.
"Yes, you can rotate. When you have the video on the time line of movie maker, right click it and then select "effects". Down the menu that then comes up you can select to rotate to 90. 180, or 270 degrees. 180 degrees is upside down. You can select 90 or 270 degrees depending on if you want the image on the side by clockwise or anticlockwise rotation. "
Needless to say here... beautiful banjo! I'll look forward to seeing/hearing that video. I personally like the contrast of the aged nickel hardware against the copper.
Brandon Furber
jay_m - Posted - 06/02/2012: 06:42:58
beautiful banjo!
i had an old thoroughbred with an unplated copper spunover pot. i always thought that that cooper color was really beautiful, and yours is the first other banjo ive seen with it.
Will1717 - Posted - 06/05/2012: 20:55:29
Vern:
To date I haven't been able to purchase or manufacture a flat hook that will stand up to the tension without breaking, or looks half decent. For this reason I came to the conclusion that it was easier to only use round hooks and design a tension hoop that will work with a round hook. The design of the tension hoop allows the flat face of the round hook to bottom out against the hoop. This assures that the hook doesn't rotate in the tension hoop when tension is applied. They work great and make the requirement for flat hooks a thing of the pass.
Bill Rickard 
Will1717 - Posted - 06/05/2012: 21:37:23
Tai:
Your question in regards to sound differences between a block rim and spun rim is some what difficult to answer as many things can affect the overall sound. I guess it's like comparing apples to oranges. The spunover rim produces a substantial difference from my ear. And if you compare a brass spunover to a copper spunover you also end up with a very different sound. The spunovers that we're producing are also substantially different compared to the spunover originally built in the late 1800's. These new spunovers are true spunovers as they have no welded seam what so ever, as the original spunover rims were silver soldered into a circle and therefore not really spunover rims. It's like Vega built a banjo called an "Electric" but it had nothing to do with electricity at all. These new rims are considerable heavier and stronger than the original rims and can therefore handle steel strings without any difficulties. The original banjos built with metal clad rims (called spunovers) where basically built to work with nylon or gut strings and were very prone to going into an egg shape after years of use or if strung up with steel strings.I may be corrected on this but I feel that the biggest sound issue if you compare the original rims to our new rims is that the new rims are annealed several times during the spinning process, to allow the metal to move as the spinning requires. By annealing the brass or copper rim you totally change the properties of the metal, which is probably the reason for the sound difference that they produce, compared to an unannealed rim. Again this is only my theory as I'm pretty certain that the lack of a weld or silver soldered joint at the neck can't affect the sound to a point that you could physically hear the difference. Interesting topic for sure!
So to sum it up these rims do sound different, in a positive way to my ear. But I guess I'm a bit swayed this way as we build them. Fortunately open back banjo players differ greatly when you compare what sound we're looking for. Very different from the resonator banjo world. Mind you if you play this particular banjo three finger style with picks you'd probably get some positive interest from the bluegrass guys!
Unfortunately we're going to have to let this one go, as it has a customer awaiting delivery. We'll try to get some sound clips posted before it gets wrapped up. Thanks everyone for your positive feedback.
Bill Rickard
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