 | stanger says:
1/13/2015 1:45:16 PM
I wrote a couple of the posts in that archived thread.
What was never mentioned in the thread was Hartford played a Stelling for a long time, too. it had a standard Stelling scale length neck.
There was another element in John's tone quest that wasn't mentioned as well. His Orpheum was, I think, his first genuinely antique banjo, and was an openback. The Orpheum 'Harp Tone' tone ring system was one of the very earliest. It featured a hollow brass tube w/ holes in it suspended off the top of the rim by square staples, which had one end of each fitting into a hole drilled on top of the rim, while the other end snugged up against the top outside edge of the rim.
A brass skirt covered those staples on the outside, held in place by the tension hoop that covered the shoe whiz-bang up. The purpose of all was to allow everything to float around the rim, not fitting anything firmly to the rim. The thought of the time was this was needed to allow the sound to get out of the banjo, as if it was somehow trapped.
This thought created the Tu-ba-phone and the Gibson ball bearing tone ring designs. At the time, all of them made for a brighter, more powerful banjo than just a head stretched on a wood rim.
John must have liked the tone, but didn't want an antique. From then on, he preferred all-wood rims, such as the one on the Stelling, which was their standard rim that had a top cut at an angle so it resembled a flathead ring, or the Deering grenadillo wood tone ring, which is laid up and lathe turned as a separate piece, then glued to the top of the rim. It, too resembles a cast metal flathead ring.
Hartford also preferred a resonated banjo. His Stelling Wood and all that followed had resonators. His first Deering had the pop-off resonator with no flange, and his later model with the 24 fret neck had the standard Deering flange. He had at least 2 of them, one with a cast flathead ring and the other with the grenadillo ring. (Grenadillo is the hardwood used on marimba bars. It's similar to rosewood and very musical when struck.)
None of those banjos had much sustain or rang out. This, too, was an integral and essential part of his low tuning; long sustain would have made his banjos sound like a piano playing only the bass notes with the sustain pedal stuck wide open all the time. The low notes sound jumbled, so his banjos all had to sound short to keep them clean and distinct sounding.
Even though that's what he preferred, Hartford loved the typical Mastertone sound he got from his bow tie and the Fender and Ode. It was only after he went solo that he began tuning low, and his dancing came along later. There are several of his recordings done in the late 70s where he's using a conventional banjo with conventional tuning alongside his low-tuned banjos on other cuts.
I think he liked a standard banjo in a band context. his last Deering was an excellent compromise, the result of his long personal evolution as an artist. While his music was all over the place, and often radical, he always thought of himself as a bluegrass banjoist, no matter what the songs were.
regards,
stanger
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