For those who build and/or appreciate Mountain Banjos

99 Members, Created 4/25/2013 -

Administrators: GrizClaw (owner)

Help With Designing Mountain Banjo

From mountainmech on 6/20/2025 6:11:58 PM

Hello everyone I am attempting to design and make a mountain banjo. The plans will be custom suited to what materials are easy/affordable in my area and with a focus on it having some more modern setup for the sake of having skills be easily transferable from this banjo to a modern bluegrass banjo. 

It is loosely based on the fox fire design with other plans and info also contributing to its make up. The main modern additions I've included are a back angle on the neck, and a 26 1/4 scale, both of which differ from the fire fox design and from most of what ive seen when researching online.

That being said I am as green as they come as far as banjos are concerned. I have never played one, even held one let alone made one. But Ive always wanted to learn and I was inspired by a youtube video I saw of a luthier who talked about the very first banjo he ever made. He said that he never played a banjo or built any instrument at the time. He got ahold of the fox fire book and using pictures and the like he went and made his banjo and that was the one he learned to play on. As a long time lover of making things this struck a chord for me and so I figured id give it a shot and maybe save some money to boot.

Anyways thats just the background. The goal of this post is to get a better understanding of what matters for a mountain banjo, and what dimension or geometries affect the sound or playability of the instrument. 

My first question is how the geometry of the pot affects the sound or tone of the banjo. Specifically theres a cavity in the pot of the banjo right? so if that cavity is wide and shallow or not very wide but quite deep etc. how does that affect the banjo? Id like to be able to make an informed design choice concerning the size of the space inside the banjo rather than just an arbitrary decision based on what ive seen.

Also the foxfire plans I have show the scale measured with the bridge at the very center of the head, this seems odd to me since usually i see the bridge closer to the edge. what location would you recommend the bridge be at on the head? 

lastly the hole in the back of the banjo, how does the size of this affect the tone, sound or volume? again at the moment ive just chosen an arbitrary size based on images ive seen, which im sure will work fine but I would rather make a properly informed decision on it. 

I am mocking up the whole thing in Solidworks which i will then turn into drawings for me to use when creating the physical banjo. So I can adjust things etc and see how the end product should look when im done. If it turns out well I'd be more than happy to release the plans, assuming plans made by someone with zero experience would be something worth trying anyways lol.

Id appreciate any info you can give me, and if theres any other info or advice you have on building mountain banjos thats not covered in what i wrote feel free to mention it.

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