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Got my Christmas gift early, and the Dobson five string banjo – the “Ladies’ banjo,” from John Bernunzio’s website store - is a keeper.
https://www.banjohangout.org/photo/309371
I’ve lost track how many banjos I’ve purchase from John Bernunzio over the last 40 years – I’m guessing that amount has not tipped the scales in favor of anointing me as a key contributor to the store’s bank account. But however many banjos I did purchase from Bernunzios store, they were all good machines, well chosen for Bernunzio’s open-back banjo herd, and each earned a prize place in my arsenal of five-string open back banjos.
But this one, a Henry Dobson Ladie’s five-string - with a 22-inch scale, a 9.5-inch pot, the distinctive metal Dobson tone rung – fits nicely, is easy to play, comfortable to hold, and revives my left arm’s ability to work the fingerboard after rotator cuff repair surgery five years ago cut into my capacity to wield a standard scale banjo.
Once it became amply clear that anything in the way of a five-string banjo with a scale from 24 inches to 26 inches would just not work for me, I turned to the shortest scale banjos I could find – after I recalled playing Bill Rust’s Stewart banjos at Clifftop in the early 1990s. He had two high-grade Stewarts dripping with inlay, and they were more than just nice. They were my first experience with 13-inch pots, though I did not gravitate toward large pot banjos for some years.
In the last two years, though, I was convinced that 13-inch pots and short necks that I found on a Gatcomb and on a Baystate would serve my purpose – and they did for a bunch of time. I was able to get back in to playing clawhammer banjo – and even three finger up picking – with banjos that offered me a comfort level in the form of a short reach for that left arm.
But the frets were tight on both banjos, and not quite true – to my ears – south of the 7th fret or so . . . and the 13-inch pot required a sitting posture that wasn’t quite uncomfortable but surely wasn’t what I was used to with a more standard scale banjo. The 13-inch pots – again, to my old ears - did not get to the right balance, did not hit the equation I was looking for – that something that each banjo player defines as their best sound. (I allow for the fact that my ears are old and, musically, bent out of shape.)
This Henry Dobson banjo suits my needs, fits my playing, and is responding in a welcome way to my fussing with the bridge height and thickness, the strings, the stuffing for the inside of the pot, and all sorts of other things that represent my attempt to dial this banjo into my playing.
It’s quiet, comfortable, friendly – and encourages me to pick it up and play it with greater frequency than other banjos that have come my way in the last, what, four or five years.
Time to drift toward the banjo stand . . .
Lew
10 December 2024
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