Well, I began my journey with the Banjo this weekend. Started working through one of Happy Traum's videos. What I found was that my years of playing guitar helped me tremendously. I have played around with fingerpicking for years and have at times worked with using thumb and finger picks, so these things weren't new to me. The biggest adjustments were having to keep my little finger resting on the banjo head as I picked, trying not to hit the banjo head itself with the picks (guitars have a hole there) and dealing with that top string. It was causing me brain damage, fretting what appeared to be the top string, but having to pick down one string to hit it. By the end of the weekend I was able to pick through a pretty credible version of "My homes across the Smoky mountains". It was an amazing amount of fun. I'm going to enjoy this instrument tremendously. I am also extremely happy with my Goldtone CC 100R. It plays well and has a wonderful "banjo" sound. I took the resonator off, as I dont really need the extra sound and I wanted to get the instrument closer to me. Also had to do some mofication to the arm rest as even with adjustment it still sat a half inch above the edge of the banjo. Had to grind slots in the threaded bar the rest screws into to allow it to drop a little lower. May still have to do some further work there, possibly slotting the rest itself so the screw can move higher.
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