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Do the number of tension brackets make a difference

From Golden_Oldie on 3/23/2014 4:13:00 PM

Hi Guys and Gals,

Was wondering if any of you good people could answer this; I have a Tanglewood 6 string banjo which has 24 tension brackets. When I first got this banjo it was poorly set up ( see my review for Tanglewood TWB18 M6). Although I had re tensioned the head I wasn't sure if I had an even tension. Having read loads info from BHO about how to tension heads and the use of a 'Drum Dial' I called upon my Son in Law, who is a drummer, for his help as he has a drum dial and a drum tuner. I wasn't so much bother about the note from the head, and being a 6 string I'm not sure what note it should be tuned to, I was more concerned about the evenness of the head. We check each bracket using the drum dial and found that some gave readings of  90 whilst other were reading 84. I decided that we should go with and average and set each bracket to give a reading of 87. This meant tighten some and loosening others to attain this. (Hope I'm not boring you all to sleep). 

Having obtained an overall evenness of the head we then checked the tuning. I was quite surprised that to find that the head was tuned to an 'A' (in the 3rd Octave). So I was wondering, does the number of brackets make a difference to the tuning of the head. In a number of forums it is suggested that a reading of 90 is the optimum for a tuning of G#. I did notice that with the head of my banjo set at 87 it was very tight, which is why I didn't want to risk taking it up to 90 in case is split the head.

Any comments, good or bad, would be very appreciated.

By the way, thought that I should mention this. When I contacted Tanglewood about tensioning the head with the aid of a drum dial they didn't recommend doing so.

1 Comments
	BanjoBelle says: 3/23/2014 6:08:28 PM Good post! All I know from what I've read about banjos in general,whether they be 4,5,6 strings,is the more brackets it has,the higher quality the instrument. My banjitar seems to maintain good tension thru the year. You've just taken us to whole new level. :-)
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