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Fretless Banjo Players

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A group for fretless players to exchange information and ideas.

309 Members, Created 1/28/2011 -

Administrators: Marc Nerenberg (owner)

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Building a fretless - Hicks Version

From will1976 on 6/3/2014 4:03:06 PM

After reading most of the posts on here, I have decided to try a build myself a banjo, akin to Stanley Hicks'. I have FF3, but I am a little confused.

I was thinking of using Sapele (part of the same hardwood family as Mahogany. The 1st problem I have is that the thinnest I can get in is 1 inch (25mm). Is it going to present any problems if all 3 sections that form the body are all if this thickness? Thus giving a rim thickness of 3 inches (75mm),

2nd problem is, as this will be my 1st selfbuild, I wanted to make it a little easier for myself, so I was thinking of using a commercially made 'tambourine' as the head. Will this work? Has anyone else done this? If so, does anyone have any suggestions of how to fix it to the middle hoop, and also how to get it so that the head is flush with the top of the banjo?

I am quite good when it comes to being hands on, so I am quite looking forward to doing this, so any help that anyone can give with these 2 problems will really be appreciated.

Kind regards

Will

5 Comments
	banjoboyd says: 6/8/2014 3:20:45 PM you can use a remo fiberskyn frame drum...it just sits in the body cavity and is held there by string tension. couldn't say how this differs in sound from the original design.
	will1976 says: 6/9/2014 4:24:42 AM banjoboyd, many thanks. I will check this out.
	BBanjers says: 6/23/2014 10:51:37 AM Rather than a remo hand drum which are quite expensive, try a 6" remo ambassador drum skin and find a 6" tin or bowl or bend a piece of steel to sit inside and tension it. I made a wooden hoop to sit inside with brackets holding it up, this allowed the sound to resonate within the whole body rather than just the 6" diameter. 3" deep is ok but the 1" thickness of the top and bottom will deaden the sound somewhat. My first mountain banjo was 3 pieces 1" thick, I ended up routing the top and bottom insides to increase the inner chamber, turned out to sound really nice.
	TKarrow says: 7/23/2014 9:50:43 AM The small remo drums are under 20 dollars..
	TKarrow says: 8/17/2014 8:31:49 PM I made 2 fretless banjos.. One of them looks just like any banjo but I used a piece of 1/8 inch purple heart wood as a (non) fretboard.. I used that because it was the hardest wood in my shop.. The second one, I used a 10 inch drum frame and stretched rawhide (buffalo I think) on both sides and stitched the two together with artificial sinue neck and (non)fret board are walnut.. I used some nice tuners I got from Taiwan on ebay(made this one for pre-1840 fur-trade re-enactment butthe tuners aren't period correct).. nylon strings on both of them and both have a 24 inch scale.. (see my homepage for pictures)
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