Gymbal31 - Posted - 04/18/2013:  05:15:54

quote:

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Originally posted by country frank

 

I can hardly believe that I am posting on this thread.... but I am.



Just this weekend I had the total good fortune to have my good friend Bill Evans stay over with us here in London. He had been up teaching on the Sore Fingers Camp and had a couple of days left in the UK prior to him returning home. To my surprise [and utter glee] he arrived with his stunning1930 Granada and I got a chance to play it......



This is my first and lasting impression;



As soon as I held that banjo I instantaneously felt that I knew it really, really well, almost uncannily well. Looking down at the banjo on my knee was like gazing upon your oldest friend, someone you have known and trusted intensely, a beloved and dear companion who knows from experience every facet of [my] creative mind.

To play the thing made me shake like a leaf, it was the most forgiving instrument I have ever touched, it ebbed and flowed with the full force of a natural tide, yet it moved tonally with the freedom and delicacy of a butterfly in flight. The sonic spectrum occupied by that instrument is otherworldly for sure. Its sound seems to come from the depths of time and memorial whilst at the same time being the absolute pinnacle of contemporary banjo sound and tonal desirability. I am a ham player for sure and this banjo just allowed me to ham it up, it forgave me, it steered me to better musical solutions, it drove me to play better and it did not once criticize me or show me up when I [very frequently] gaffed.

The best analogy for me to express what I feel is a visual one. I studied Fine Art [sculpture] and I work in education of the arts. This instrument was like holding the most perfect palette of colours you have ever witnessed. Imagine that you're about to paint a masterpiece and you look down at you palette, every colour on that palette is the exact right colour for your expressive state at that very moment. No matter how you chose to mix those colours up, you will always end up with the exact tone for your expressive self to flower and bloom fully.

Now i have never achieved that palette in reality and I doubted [until Sunday] that it could ever be realised, its always been a kind of 'ultimate' scenario because you know that if you can get those colours just right, then your painting might just turn out to be a masterpiece.



This banjo was all these things, the ultimate tool of the master craftsman, the oldest, dearest and most familiar friend you ever had, the greatest conversationalist you ever met and your keenest and most sensitive lover [Hope you don't mind me saying that Bill!].



What an experience, I am really very grateful to you Bill for allowing me the opportunity to play such a fine instrument. Thanks for reading and here is a picture of me playing it.

 

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That was my first as well.  Bill Evans was in town for a concert and did a workshop at the Old Town School.  We took a break and I asked if I could look at his Grenada.  He asked if I wanted to play it.  I said "Can I?" He smiled and said "Are your hands clean?"

And that 10 minutes was really all it took to convince that pre-wars are no myth.  I think Frank Neat did the neck and it was perfect. The notes just rang out and then had perfect decay.  I would love to give it another try now.  I was still too new to the banjo two years ago.

Got a chance to play a couple of Steve Huber's pre-wars last year at SPBIGMA.  Really just incredible sound you can get out of the good ones.

country frank - Posted - 04/18/2013:  05:23:14

Micky, absolutely right about the neck. It was the first time i got to play one of Franks necks and it was perfect in every way, super-fast, super-accurate, unbelievably nimble and an utter joy to play.



I gather it [the banjo not the neck] belonged to Rual Yarbrough at some point, i asked Bill about the instruments recording history and although he thought it featured on a few of Bill Monroe's records i don't think its been very widely recorded [until now].



PWCP.

Edited by - country frank on 04/18/2013 05:24:09

fatdaddyo6 - Posted - 04/18/2013:  08:32:37

First flathead I played was the banger, followed by a 3 and a 7 that belonged to Rick Riman.
Seems like Lappins banjo was in there some place. A bunch of stuff that went through Harry Sparks hands.
I aquired a tb-1 that had a flat head ring in it that was "it" for me, I picked it up after Butch shoved his 4 in
my hands at Beanblossom and said " play this , you need to have one, you know what to do with it " and left me with the magic banjo for about 3 hours.
They had something going on back at Gibson then, through luck
or science , something

o2playlikeEarl - Posted - 04/19/2013:  06:49:23

I played a pre-war RB3 once, I wasn't impressed. Owning a pre-war because of nostalgia is great and I'd like to have one for that reason, but to think they are the end all of end alls regarding sound is not realistic. Just because it's a prewar doesn't make it sound like Earl, Sonny, or JD's. I'm convinced much of their tone is in the right hand. just my opinion.

RB3WREATH - Posted - 04/19/2013:  07:51:51

What if you have that right hand? You will not get better tone than that of a prewar flathead.
Joe

fatdaddyo6 - Posted - 04/19/2013:  07:55:54

The tone is in the right hand. The response and correct feel and incredible power of every note
is the banjo. There are some great modern banjos, some bad pre wars ( not a lot ). They are true
virtuoso grade musical instruments, not every body likes the same things.
But that's not what this thread is about.

Who has a first time story ?
Batter up

Banjophobic - Posted - 04/19/2013:  08:41:48

It was back in my late teens and I was at Galax  fiddlers convention, jamming. A guy comes in to the jam with a prewar top tension flathead. About 3-4 of us banjo players are playing very good modern banjos or conversions . I was playing a frankentone banjo of old and new parts at the time. But even though I was a kid, I knew enough about banjos and what it was to appreciate getting to play it.  Let me put it mildly by saying I was not impressed when i played it. Of course I didnt say anything, but Inside I was really disappointed.

Fast forward a few years later and I got to play a few more flatheads along the way and it dawned on me why I wasnt impressed with the first one. It wasn't the banjo because I heard it later and it was a fantastic example of prewar flathead tone.What was lacking was A) my skills at the time to get the 'tone' out of it, B) my ears ability to really hear what I was listening for and C) experince playing enough banjos to quantify 'it' when I heard 'it'. 

The biggest realization was that this magic tone was a combination of great pw flathead and a player who could draw out the tone. Once you have the equation of  X+Y=Z, you get it. X stands for accomplished player, Y stands for great flathead banjo and Z is 'tone'.