rcmoore - Posted - 05/14/2013:  06:54:08

Original Dobson zither style banjo.  First one of these I have ever seen up for auction. ebay.com/itm/Henry-C-Dobson-5-...08255800?

Bob Moore

SWCooper - Posted - 05/14/2013:  07:04:12

Wow. 1867 (assuming the patent was for the pot style). And American. That's astonishing.

Stephen John Prior - Posted - 05/14/2013:  07:15:04

Wonderful. My first banjo was a Dobson very similar to that one.

trapdoor2 - Posted - 05/14/2013:  07:48:58

One went up on ebay a year or two ago. I can't remember if it was disassembled and photo-essayed here on BHO or over on the ning-Minstrel Banjo site.

Cool banjo. Not as rare as one would think (at least, I've seen a several of them on ebay over the years). I'd love to have one...but they tend to sell over my limit. They're not particularly great sounding banjos (at least the one I got to play wasn't). I think it would be fun to reproduce one.

rcmoore - Posted - 05/14/2013:  07:58:36

Marc,  Next time I'm in Huntsville maybe we can have lunch.  My brother lives outside of New Hope, and I visit him 3 or 4 times each year.   I went to school in Gurley when I was very young.

Bob Moore

Paul R - Posted - 05/14/2013:  09:33:15

Pete Roehling (Deaf Lester Crawdad) has had photos of one on his BHO home page for a long time. Take a look. I don't know why "American" would be so strange. Cammeyer was American.

trapdoor2 - Posted - 05/14/2013:  11:16:59

quote:

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Originally posted by rcmoore

 

Marc,  Next time I'm in Huntsville maybe we can have lunch.  My brother lives outside of New Hope, and I visit him 3 or 4 times each year.   I went to school in Gurley when I was very young.

Bob Moore

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Absolutely! Just send me a note and we'll work it out. My wife's brother and his wife lived in New Hope (aka "No Hope"...she's a NH native) for years but moved to the Gulf Coast a year or so ago.

dculgan - Posted - 05/14/2013:  12:39:43

I play a "conversion" banjo, 1867 pat flush fret neck on single ply hoop.

1867 pat. H.C. Dobson neck on home-made rim

SWCooper - Posted - 05/14/2013:  13:06:37

Yeah, but I thought Cammeyer was already living in Britain when he made his first zither banjo. It certainly never caught on in the States the way it did here.

Dreadful design, by the way. I have a warm spot for zither banjos, but all those little fiddly woodscrews screwed all around the pot...eh, they usually don't age well.