OdeOwner - Posted - 09/15/2013:  12:30:05

I have always been curious as to what style and year my Ode archtop is. Inside of the cast aluminum pot is stamped ODE along with "Boulder Colorado" in script. The digits are: 2 SR - **** . Though it is very heavy I have always loved the sound and wouldn't trade it for the world. Any thoughts?

Ode archtop 1

Ode archtop 2

Ode archtop 3

islandgirl - Posted - 09/15/2013:  13:13:03

I have one, too, and I agree that it has a sound and feel all its own. One thing about mine, though, is that I have the banjo and the resonator, but the flanges that attach the resonator went awol somewhere along the line before I bought the banjo, and I would LOVE to be able to find a set. The rim seems to be
larger than your average sized banjo or I would substitute another flange. I bought a set of Vega flanges, but that isn't going to work either. Has anyone experienced a similar problem?

Ira Gitlin - Posted - 09/15/2013:  14:12:38

Try checking  on the Ome banjo site: omebanjos.com/odeinstruments.html .

OdeOwner - Posted - 09/15/2013:  14:53:58

Yeah, I already tried that but nothing.

tlong - Posted - 09/16/2013:  04:54:27

I would say it is an 80,maybe 79. It has only the ODE logo in the peghead. Most of the ones made in 79 had the logo mounted high and in a straight line . IN 80 they went to a arched logo mounted lower on the peg head. It is not an orifinal Boulder ODE since it has a bigger neck heel and the Burns truss rod.

Scooter Muse - Posted - 09/16/2013:  11:58:31

Ed Britt (my top friend) can tell you anything you want to know about Odes. He was a great help to me with my original boulder ode. 

dmiller - Posted - 09/16/2013:  12:22:26

Were ODE arch tops being made in 79 or 80?  That flange looks like something from the "earlier" years and not something done "recently".  I just sent a private message to Ed Britt/ Mike Stanger/ and black flag about this topic.  Hopefully they'll show up and tell us what they know.  

country frank - Posted - 09/16/2013:  12:34:01

It's an Ode Style 2. Page 34 of the catalogue. (Although they are badged as Baldwin), same pot, same flange pieces and same neck construction (double maple strip). 



Nice looking banjo.

Edited by - country frank on 09/16/2013 12:36:27

BrittDLD1 - Posted - 09/16/2013:  16:12:18

Gotta go play some music in a few minutes... Remove the resonator, and look at the dark (rosewood) heelcap. Does it have a round hole in it? IF it DOES -- it's made by Baldwin, in the late-70's-to-1980.

I'll be glad to go into more detail, in the next day or so. (Tho there area few people on here, already, who can do a decent job of identifying your banjo, and explaining how various parts work, and how to adjust them.)

Best -- Ed Britt

Edited by - BrittDLD1 on 09/16/2013 16:13:43

Billybiltbanjo - Posted - 09/16/2013:  16:49:18

The Stew Mac Eagle banjo kits from the 70's used to sell the same archtop alloy rims although they were not stamped Ode..They had the same Elton globe shaped shoe brackets on them too.. Very bright sounding pots and sounded better than the Saga alloy archtop rims (in my little opinion)..Ode and Gariepy also used them on some banjos..I was unaware till recently that Elton was the manufacturer of those shoe brackets but just came across a bunch of them in the original Elton packaging

stanger - Posted - 09/17/2013:  00:37:13

The Baldwin /Ode Style 2 was the last in a long series of Ode archtop banjos.
Chuck was a very good machinist, and his choice of using aluminum rims allowed him to freely experiment with his castings when they were mounted on a lathe. All he had to do was cast his rims that have an integral tone ring as an archtop, and to make the same rim a flathead only needed a little extra trimming on a lathe.

When he produced his early Series 20 rims, the first with the integrated tone ring, most that I've seen are flatheads, but with the Series 30, a cleaner and more refined version of the 20, as many archtops as flatheads began appearing.

The Series 40 rims, which featured the first tone rings that used separate pieces of brass in them- brass tubes and brass inserts to hold the tubes, which were driven into the cast holes of the integral tone ring, grew to be quite complicated, but were designed so that all that was needed was to reverse some parts and the same design would become a flathead.

The Style 2 archtop was the only one where a brass cap that fit over the aluminum inner lip was ever used. All the rest used brass that was suspended in some fashion away from the aluminum and kept separate. The Series 2's tone comes from the brass joined tightly to the aluminum, with no suspension or separation.

Chuck used the same parts from the Series 40 archtops on his wood-rimmed line to offer an archtop tone ring as an option with them. The tone ring stuff when mounted into a wood rim is very similar to the old Epiphone Recording model's tone rings and even earlier tone rings that were also archtops used in Orpheum and Paramounts. All had multiple clips driven into the top of the rim which cradled a brass tube and suspended it off the top wood surface.

The idea that the tone ring should be kept as separate as possible from the wood rim was very old. It's seen in many early banjos, including the Fairbanks and Coles, beginning at end of the 19th century. The acoustic objective was to 'let the sound out'.

The early Gibson tone rings used a similar suspension with their ball bearing tone ring designs. The ball bearings simply replaced the clips. While they were all complicated to assemble, Gibon's Mastertone ball bearing was ridiculously time consuming to assemble, and their adoption of the cast archtop ring was their answer to saving expensive labor costs. That it created a unique tone of it's own was secondary to them in the beginning, but was soon used as a way to claim superiority.

Ode's antique archtop design was an anomaly in the mid-60's. For whatever reason, Chuck just stuck with it. As far as I know, only 2-3 Odes were ever made with a cast archtop ring, including Larry McNeeley's early Baldwin.
regards,
stanger

ps- and thanks for the heads-up, David! Hopefully, Ed or someone will post some pictures. Words tend to fail in stuff like this.

stanger - Posted - 09/17/2013:  00:56:45

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Originally posted by Billybiltbanjo

 

The Stew Mac Eagle banjo kits from the 70's used to sell the same archtop alloy rims although they were not stamped Ode..They had the same Elton globe shaped shoe brackets on them too.. Very bright sounding pots and sounded better than the Saga alloy archtop rims (in my little opinion)..Ode and Gariepy also used them on some banjos..I was unaware till recently that Elton was the manufacturer of those shoe brackets but just came across a bunch of them in the original Elton packagingI

I was just given some old Stew-Mac catalogs by Alex Zakem. who generously and graciously allowed them to replace my copies which were destroyed a few years ago in a basement flood.

Stew-Mac offered a lot of Ode parts in some of their earliest catalogs, and I became curious about them too. I expect Kix Stewart as a former Ode employee and a major influence on his boss was able to buy them when the Ode company was being all packed up to move to the new Baldwin Arkansas factory. 

Another conjecture is Baldwin may have continued to buy their metal parts from the Colorado foundry that did the work for Chuck. Kix may have been allowed to buy the same parts straight from the foundry, and he already knew what would be needed with them. I was particularly surprised to see Kix offered the Ode tailpiece, with the Ode stamp and all. 

I always believed that Baldwin didn't sell parts separately, but I may have been wrong. Elton parts, of course, could be had by anyone with access to an Elton catalog.

The main difference between the Ode rims and all others was the grade of aluminum used- Chuck always used hard aircraft grade aluminum. The Ode rims were also highly lathed and polished. A good example of the sophisticated lathing is seen on the outer faces of the rims; they all have a relief angle, so the tops of the rims are very slightly larger in diameter than the bottoms. This allowed the castiings to come out of their molds very cleanly, and when carefully trimmed on a metal lathe, also created the correct down-angle for the neck heel. The heel never needed to be trimmed because the rim created the down-angle.

Unfortunately for me, the down-angle was perfect if a 1/2" high bridge was used. I always found them too low for me, and had to do some tinkering on my metal rimmed Ode to get the action lowered when I installed a 5/8" bridge on it.

For unknown reasons, the wood-rimmed Odes were designed to use a 5/8" bridge, but the metal rimmed banjos continued to use the 1/2.

regards,

stanger 

BrittDLD1 - Posted - 09/17/2013:  15:27:11

quote:

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Originally posted by Billybiltbanjo

The Stew Mac Eagle banjo kits from the 70's used to sell the same archtop alloy rims although they were not stamped Ode..They had the same Elton globe shaped shoe brackets on them too.. Very bright sounding pots and sounded better than the Saga alloy archtop rims (in my little opinion)..Ode and Gariepy also used them on some banjos..I was unaware till recently that Elton was the manufacturer of those shoe brackets but just came across a bunch of them in the original Elton packaging

---

Hello Bill --

I probably sold about 10 Stew-Mac kits to friends, back in the early-'70s, and often helped them do the harder parts, too. The Stew-Mac kits were the best out there... But in MY foggy memory, they were NOT quite the same casting as the ODEs.

I had a Model 43/Grade 2 longneck back then. It had the "Series 40" diecast rim, with the rod-on-plates archtop tonering. A truly superb banjo. I sold it (to a friend) to buy my first Fairbanks Whyte Laydie. (It's been replaced with a few other ODEs, since then.)

The Stew-Mac rims were GOOD, tho... And were probably made by the same foundry, near Boulder. The diecast rims were poured into an expensive cast-iron mold, to maintain their dimensional accuracy, and surface finish. And they were much less prone to holes, pitting, and debris in the pour. (Sand-casting cost much less to tool-up, and pour -- but required far more finishing of the cast part.)

(The Saga kits were NOT great back then. I ordered 6 kits, and sent them all back -- due to
obvious quality problems. The 'mahogany' necks were actually luan, and were so soft they would dent with your fingernail.)

By 1965 ODE was selling ALL of its parts -- to anyone -- by catalog. So it's hard to tell where some of those parts wound-up. And all of the PRE-Baldwin aluminum rings fitted with the fancier tonerings were sold-off as 'surplus' -- when Baldwin closed the Boulder shop, in mid-1968. That's probably how Gariepy acquired them...

The ball-lugs (brackets) being made by Elton, is news to me... But most of the "fittings" on the earliest "Series 20" sandcast rims WERE supplied by Elton. The tuners, tailpieces, heads, capos, straps, etc. So it is possible.

I know that the first-run of bracket hooks were made custom for ODE... They had a real problem with the hook tips breaking-off under high tension. I always figured that Chuck also had the ball-lugs made at local machine shop. (I'll have to ask him next time I talk with him.)

Best-- Ed Britt

mikehalloran - Posted - 09/19/2013:  08:17:02

Interesting thread. Then there were the Christy banjos. You can see where the ODE logo is ground off the inside of the pot.