Karen Dalton's neck has the 5th peg at the 9th fret like a Vega "excel" I can't count frets beyond that. What was the scale on this banjo? Does anyone know?
12 Comments |
 | coalandice says:
5/5/2015 5:35:32 PM
Like Will Rogers said
"All I know is what I read
on the interwebs..."
banjohangout.org/archive/170933
"The late Karen Dalton with her 27-fret banjo -- made by ODE
employee, Ray Chatfield, in the early-'60s"
about 30 postings down from the top by BrittDLD1
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 | Ken LeVan says:
5/5/2015 5:48:44 PM
Thanks! What a wonder is the worldwide interweb.As Casey Stengel said" you can look it up.
I din't know how to post much on this but I will post the pic on the regular forum
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| coalandice says:
5/5/2015 5:53:18 PM
I wonder what became of that banjo?
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| Ken LeVan says:
5/5/2015 6:02:34 PM
What a gem! Not that I want to make another one, but I'd love to see it. What kind of strings did she use?
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 | boulderfolkie says:
5/5/2015 9:43:16 PM
Coalandice--go to my homepage; it hangs on my wall; will try to post photos...
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| boulderfolkie says:
5/5/2015 10:20:23 PM
Sorry...ignore my previous post; my Chatfield/ODE is NOT Karen's banjo; hers had the plain xtra long neck with dots.
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| coalandice says:
5/6/2015 4:14:26 AM
So what do you do for strings
and what's the book you mention?
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| Ken LeVan says:
5/6/2015 5:35:45 AM
Boulderfolkie, Did ODE make the Karen Dalton banjo? Also, as coalandice asks,where did she get strings for it?
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| boulderfolkie says:
5/6/2015 9:37:24 AM
When he was working at ODE, Ray Chatfield made both Karen's and my extra long longneck. They are not ODEs but were made in the shop in his spare time. Strings are not a problem as all the sets of std longneck strings have enough extra length to fit. As soon as I find it, I will post the name of the book which pictures my Chatfield. I have to have the skin head replaced and work on a slight twist in the neck...even Brazilian can have issues and Ray carved a mighty thin neck.
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| Ken LeVan says:
5/6/2015 10:17:38 AM
Boulderfolkie. I have long had this belief that most of those old longnecks have a slight twist that nobody notices and they keep raising the action or shimming the nut. It’s almost inevitable, as they had no carbon fiber in those days, and used a one-way tension rod that you had to tighten clockwise to pull the neck back. Since the tensional force of the strings will invariably create an upbow with a long neck like that, tightening of the tension rod would put a clockwise twist into the neck at the skinny part above the 5th tuner.
I have seen a number of them like that. Nowadays, I use an electric bass two-way truss rod flanked by carbon fiber strips in longnecks.
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| boulderfolkie says:
5/7/2015 9:09:56 PM
Found it! The book which pictures the Chatfield banjo on pg. 94 is titled "Complete Banjo Repair" by Larry Sandberg and published by Oak Publications in 1979 (softcover).
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| Ken LeVan says:
5/8/2015 5:58:39 AM
As a result of this discussion, I did a lot of research into Karen Dalton, now passed, who's music is experiencing a revival in interest, and has achieved a kind of "cult status". There is an entire album posted on Youtube where you can hear her playing that banjo. Her singing is quite amazing and her banjo playing is haunting.
theguardian.com/music/2007/mar/23/folk
npr.org/templates/story/story....=92456345
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