So you can come out of the closet and admit that you own and pick one of these indestructable banjos!

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From Klondike Waldo on 2/1/2011 6:10:21 AM

Hi, My name is Bob and I am an Aluminum Afficianado. All three of my banjos are Asian Aluminum rim beauties .

My main banjo, "Molly" on which I've composed a dozen songs for kids and several tunes is an Epiphone MB 200. I tried several other (wooden rim) banjos in the local music store and just liked the sound and feel of the Epi better.  Oddly enough, my wife prefers the sound of my Epi over other banjos she hears.

When I sold a guitar last summer, I bought a tenor banjo- Iida 229T, (c. 1978) a cast aluminum rim archtop model- not "Bottlecap", it has brackets through shoes and and a one-piece flange.  I'm not very far along on learning tenor yet, but I'm planning to keep at it. This one I named "Tootsie" as a mnemonic for the model number  and a s a reminder on my years spent playing in "banjo bands" as a young tuba player

The third aluminum rim banjo I have is a 1970's vintage Japanese banjo which had the brand name Alex on the peghead. I bought it used on eBay. It has a non-bottlecap 11 1/8"  30 bracket rim. The neck and resonator appeared to be mahogany, but as I started working on it to slim down the somewhat clubby neck profile, It turned out to have a laminated neck.  It looked to have a truss rod, but the truss rod cover was merely cosmetic. It does have a non-adjustable steel reinforcing rod, however.  The resonator had the usual gold American eagle printed on the back but there were a few cracks developing in the finish, which on removal revealed an attractive grain under a thick plastic opague finish- so I stripped that off and refinished the neck and resonator with a walnut stain and a rubbbed polyurtehane satin finish. I re-set the neck angle, reshaped the peghead, replaced the old open-gear guitar tuners with planetaries (Involved shaving down the head thickness some) and the friction fifth string peg with a geared Schaller peg. re-set the nut, added spikes for the fifth string, made a new fifth string nut to replace  a worn wood screw, and modified teh resonator mounting system from 12 screws (of two different sizes)  to four identical machine bolts into brass inserts in the wooden mounting blocks inside the resonator. I trimmed down the mounting plates as well- a little better looking, easier to change /remove for adjustments.  New strings and a new bridge and it's like a whole different banjo now. This one, "The Banjo Formerly Known As Alex" is available  for adoption if anyone would be interested.

1 Comments
	vintagewells says: 2/3/2011 5:46:39 PM The thick opaque finish on some of these really does cover some nice wood. One of mine has a nice fine grain mahogany that I feel the music in. It makes playing it more personal. The gate check banjo has a coarser, not so pretty mahogany, and some day I may reneck it. But for now it is a good neck.
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