John_J - Posted - 01/03/2016:  18:36:16

Am considering a hide head for my Bart Reiter Round Peak....  

What are pros and cons of staying with steel strings?  Thanks.    JJ

mdthib - Posted - 01/03/2016:  18:45:38

I have stayed with steel strings and enjoy it. I haven't tried any other type of string, but I'd guess that steel will have a bit more volume and be a middle ground tonally. Hide will mellow the sound somewhat, nylon might add more mellowing. I can say I love hide and steel, and hope others will share their experience. If not, strings are cheap and if you play around let us know what you learn. 

Maybe the bigger issue is what kind of hide you go with. I have pre-mounted Balch Stearns head, which is very thin and has a great tone that is brighter than a thicker head would give. People often don't know it is hide until I tell them, which is not true for some of the thicker hides I've seen and heard. 

jbalch - Posted - 01/03/2016:  19:04:39

John:

My Reiters are all set up with hide heads - and steel strings.  I love the sound of that combination!

Go for it!

JB

RV6 - Posted - 01/04/2016:  06:32:40

I have my Reiter Buckbee set up with a Renaissance head (painted black on the inside) and Aquila "Super Nylguts" (with the non-wound fourth) and my Reiter A Flat with a painted Ren. head and Chris Sands Mediums.  The painted head adds a whopping 3 grams of weight and I think "takes the edge off" so to speak. 

I've had goatskin heads on both banjos, a Balch 4 Star and an Elderly that I mounted on a Balch square flesh hoop.  The Elderly head is just slightly brighter than either Ren. head.    I think the differences in sound between Ren. heads is minor to none.  The difference between the Balch and Elderly was quite noticeable with the Balch head being much more mellow.  I sold the Balch and put the Elderly head on the shelf for a spare. We have wide swings in humidity levels here and I find the Ren. heads easier to get along with.

I've played with the Sands strings for a couple of years on various banjos and put the Aquila "Super Nylguts" on the Buckbee a couple of months ago.  I had problems with the first Aquila strings I tried (Red's) with both the 1st and 5th strings breaking.  The Super's have been bullet proof and are a bit louder than the Sands and I think are slightly louder than steel (based on my Tablet sound meter app.)  Not a scientific measuring device but does confirm my and and my jam buddies ears.

I went to polymer strings for the sound and for the ease of fretting and "strumming" due to my aging, arthritic fingers/hands and am pleased with the results.  Another advantage to nylon strings, especially the "Supers" with the plain 4th string is there should be no fret wear.  With nylon strings, you have to make sure there are no sharp edges on the tailpiece, bridge, nut or tuner string holes.

trapdoor2 - Posted - 01/04/2016:  06:49:52

quote:

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Originally posted by John_J

 

Am considering a hide head for my Bart Reiter Round Peak....  

What are pros and cons of staying with steel strings?  Thanks.    JJ

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 I haven't ever had a problem. My first Stewart has had calfskin and steels on since 1987. Still goin' strong.

Johnny Bell - Posted - 01/04/2016:  21:45:14

I would say that if you are used to steel strings there is no need to switch when you install a skin head.

I recently upgraded the head on my 12" Rickard Maple Ridge to a 4 Star Select goat skin head from John Balch. I have it strung up with my preferred heavy gauge steel strings (11, 13, 18, 26W, 10). I couldn't be happier with the sound and aesthetic. It has a very deep tone, plenty of volume and just enough sustain. I don't foresee any need or desire to ever return to a synthetic banjo head.

I would HIGHLY recommend contacting Mr. Balch for all of your hide head needs. He produces the finest product with a very fast turn around time and at a great value. His pre mounted heads are easy to install and worry free.

Tom Berghan - Posted - 01/05/2016:  07:00:07

Nearly every banjo player who was recorded before 1960 played with steel strings and hide heads.  

You see, Mylar had not yet been invented and Edison's audio recording machine had not yet been invented when all banjo players played with gut strings.  So, Gus Cannon, Charlie Poole, Don Reno and Earl Scruggs (not to mention all the jazz banjoists) . . . all played with steel strings and a hide head!

You are cleared for take off!  

John_J - Posted - 01/05/2016:  13:35:54

quote:

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Originally posted by Tom Berghan

 

Nearly every banjo player who was recorded before 1960 played with steel strings and hide heads. 

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Thanks to all for your responses.....

Tom,  Brilliant response; never considered the timeframe before....

Am now in the process of ordering a hide head from John Balch...

JJ

Joel Hooks - Posted - 01/05/2016:  15:48:28

Not that is matters but this is not true.

quote:

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Originally posted by Tom Berghan

 

Nearly every banjo player who was recorded before 1960 played with steel strings and hide heads.  

You see, Mylar had not yet been invented and Edison's audio recording machine had not yet been invented when all banjo players played with gut strings.  So, Gus Cannon, Charlie Poole, Don Reno and Earl Scruggs (not to mention all the jazz banjoists) . . . all played with steel strings and a hide head!

You are cleared for take off!  

---

Edited by - Joel Hooks on 01/05/2016 15:49:03

Tom Berghan - Posted - 01/05/2016:  22:09:13

I said "nearly," not all Joel!  I made certain to cover my *** as I figured you would catch that!  

There are of course some wonderful cylinder recordings of amazing virtuosi banjoists playing gut strings and there may be some 78s but I'm not sure. However I'm sure Joel knows. He is an expert on that period. 

Thanks Joel, Best Wishes, Tom

Joel Hooks - Posted - 01/06/2016:  07:37:39

I think a truer statement would be...

"Nearly every regular banjo player who was recorded after the mid 1920s and before 1960 played with wire strings and hide head."

Nothing could make the cutter head jump more than the sharp tone of gut stings on a banjo.  Some of the very first records Edison cut of music were banjoists.

By the late 20s there was a shift in popular mass market music products to "nostalgia" music that was actually fresh and hot.

Concert style banjoists (as opposed to string band banjo accompanists) shifted to radio and vaudeville-- but they still recorded... and they played fingerstyle on gut strings. 

Fred Bacon, Shirley and Cliff Spaulding (Shirley made one of my favorite recordings of a George Lansing number "Somewhere in Dixie") Frank Bradbury, Alex Magee (Alex was pictured in a Gibson catalog) Bill Bowen, etc.  Though by the late 20s-30s they took to the plectra to get work (but not Bacon, he was diehard fingerstyle and gut till the end).

Most of these guys used a light bulb attachment on the dowel rod to keep the head tight.  Someone should make reproductions of those using incandescent Christmas light bulbs  (red and blue were popular), now there is an untapped market!

FWIW, Fred Van Eps probably recorded more alone than Gus Cannon, Charlie Pool, Don Reno and Scruggs combined.  FVE even released records in the 1950s, by that time he was using nylon strings.

That said--- Wire and hide work fine...  if you are in to that sort of thing.

Tom Berghan - Posted - 01/06/2016:  13:04:47

Thanks Joel, Very interesting. Sadly these recordings are extremely obscure today. The last reissue of the music of Van Epps and Ossman was in 1974 on the Yazoo label. A vinyl LP out of print. So, Thank You for being a champion of this music, technique, and gut strings. 

Ken LeVan - Posted - 01/06/2016:  14:08:39

This is a tremendously interesting subject, and I realize that earller banjos always had skin heads -no options.

In terms of steel strings, there was an evolution: gut - nylon - steel,

CF Martin started making steel strung guitars in 1929.

Metallurgy and wire-making technology was making great strides in the early and mid 1800s, driven largely by the huge migration of settlers moving Westward; they needed wire for fencing with which to mark their homesteads, farms, ranches, and fields. Untold thousands of miles of wire for fencing were thus made . . . and in the process some of the wire was adapted to the needs of musical instruments. When metal strings became available they were quickly found to be one-fifth the price of gut strings, and longer lasting, and louder -- which of course made them doubly appealing to a growing mass market.

However, the quest for louder guitars came up against the laws of physics and most of the first guitars strung with steel strings didn't last long: they commonly developed bent necks, warped faces, pulled-off bridges, and suffered various other failures 4. Starting in the late 1800s, brothers Carl and August Larson made the first durable steel string flat-top guitars in response to these circumstances. The success of their designs were based in two things: first, excellent workmanship; and second, the intelligent application of engineering-sense to flat-top instrument making. In fact, their seminal contributions are recognized today largely because their instruments have survived -- when most of their predecessors' and contemporaries' have not. This is yet more remarkable in light of the fact that the Larson brothers' overall production was minuscule in quantity compared with factories that were turning out thousands of instruments yearly 5..

At about the same time as the Larson brothers were inventing the durable flat-top steel string guitar, Orville Gibson was solving the same structural problems by making his steel-strung guitars arch-topped; while that design/technique is the subject of a separate article, it should be pointed out that here also, as far as the emergence of any individual American craftsmen whose names might be associated with improvements in the steel string guitar is concerned, only that of one other -- Lloyd Loar -- has come down to us.

Once the Larsons and Orville Gibson had created durable versions of the steel string guitar, it participated in all the musical fads and ferment that came and went in the late 1800s; but it didn't become an instrument made in large numbers or with a principal identity of its own until the 1920s -- surprisingly late in its history. There simply wasn't sufficient critical mass of interest in its sound until then, and the factories had not seen it as a moneymaker. Gibson made the first factory-made steel string guitar produced in quantity -- the archtop jazz L5 -- in 1922. Martin & Co. switched to making mostly flat-top steel string guitars only in 1929, after almost a hundred years of having made everything else. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So, my guess is that steel, string banjos happened in the mid 1920s, in jazz tenor banjos, which needed the volume.

Plastic heads happened MUCH later. I can still remember it in the late 50s starting as "Weather King" drum heads.

I heard a radio interview with Earl Scruggs, where he said "We used to tighten the heads up until they broke, then back off. He went  further by saying " A man wouldn't need many plastic heads in a lifetime" And the rest, as they say, is history.

I am willing to bet that skin heads have a sound that is different than plastic ones - no argument.  I am also sure that gut strings are also different than nylon strings, and steel strings. No argument or contest.

If someone came to me and asked me to make them a banjo with a skin head and gut strings, I would be thrilled to do that! - please commission me to make one for you- I know how to do it. Problem is, nobody will.

I made a banjo with a (1920s) skin head  for guitarist John Miller and it was great in many regards -one of the best banjos I have made.

To quote my friend Bill Porter, "Mastertone types are where the money is", And the rest, as they say, is history.

trapdoor2 - Posted - 01/06/2016:  14:22:32

quote:

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Originally posted by Tom Berghan

 

Thanks Joel, Very interesting. Sadly these recordings are extremely obscure today. The last reissue of the music of Van Epps and Ossman was in 1974 on the Yazoo label. A vinyl LP out of print. So, Thank You for being a champion of this music, technique, and gut strings. 

 

---

A huge number of these recordings are available on youtube. If you type "Fred Van Eps" into Google, you'll get hits for a large number of recordings. The LOC (Library or Congress) "National Jukebox" site has 32 of them...all free downloads. Ossman is well covered on youtube as well.

They are indeed obscure, but I would opine no longer 'extremely'.  I quickly found vids of all of Shirley Spaulding's 1921 recordings, for example. "Somewhere In DIxie", "Royal Tourist", "A Footlight Favorite" and "Danse Arlequin". A few years ago, finding *anything* by her would be difficult.

trapdoor2 - Posted - 01/06/2016:  14:35:11

Let me see if I can get this in before Joel does.

Banjo (and guitar) string evolution: horsehair/vegetation - gut - silk - steel - nylon.

At several points in time, gut became difficult to obtain. A variety of alternatives were tried. Silk strings were a very common alternative in the early part of the 20th cent. I have a set of Stewart brand silk strings...very fragile. They're basically silk thread that has been soaked in hide glue and then allowed to dry. I believe most complained that they were good for one good evening's performance, if that.

Steel for banjo strings appear pretty early in the 20th cent. but were never accepted by 5-string "classic" fingerstylists (as Joel has pointed out).

Nylon was not developed until 1935, the first nylon strings (guitar) debuted in 1944. By the 1950's Van Eps was playing and advocating nylon over gut for banjoists.

Edited by - trapdoor2 on 01/06/2016 14:38:41

Dan Drabek - Posted - 01/06/2016:  15:34:39

quote:

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Originally posted by trapdoor2

Nylon was not developed until 1935, the first nylon strings (guitar) debuted in 1944. By the 1950's Van Eps was playing and advocating nylon over gut for banjoists.

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Nylon strings were championed by the guitarist Andres Segovia in collaboration with Albert Augustine in the mid to late 1940's.

Once Segovia switched to nylon, so did nearly every other classical guitarist. There are still some who claim that gut strings give a brighter, more pleasing sound than nylon, but the nylon was so much easier to keep in tune. 

DD

RioStat - Posted - 01/06/2016:  19:08:12

Hide head and Steel strings...........good name for an album!