Here is some information on the Gatcomb Little Gem Neck Adjuster:

https://gatcombbanjoregistry.weebly.com/the-little-gem.html

Thanks for posting that, Harry. I think even I might be able to use a device like that.

David

You could look into the Nechville "Quick-Cam" neck connection, which is probably the biggest advancement in neck-pot connection in quite a long time.

Video from Tom Nechville: Nechville Neck Connection - YouTube

The various 19th and early 20th century gizmos billed as adjustment devices were optimistic at best and destructive at worst.

The destructive aspect is when plectrum, and later the folk era, came along with wire strings. The devices were all over adjusted to try and compensate for the added tension as well as an attempt to use a taller bridge.

This distorted rims, cracked heels, and slipped dowels.

The Kay neck adjustor, as crude as it was, actually worked. On a recent trip to visit my dying mother I pulled the Silvertone out of my dad’s closet and was able to set the neck to zero back angle for nylon strings.

I think more makers should use something like that.

Having been a luthier for over 35 years, and having been alerted to many innovations from the past that are no longer seen, and having seen countless new luthiers with big ideas on how to improve banjos, mandolins, guitars etc., I've concluded that anything we can think of to try has been tried before at some time in the hundreds of years fretted instrument have been made (not to mention the even more hundreds of years for non-fretted ). Why don't we see and know about all the innovations that have been tried? Because, for the most part the things that worked stayed around and the things that didn't work got tossed, and often lost to history so we try them again over and over not knowing that they've already been done.
Perhaps that will change now that everything is recorded in photos, videos, recordings and endless on-line discussions, but as of now, instruments as we see them built today are the distillation of hundreds of years of reverse engineering, keeping what works and tossing what doesn't.
So that's a long way of saying that a truly innovative, simple, functional, convenient mechanism for adjusting banjo neck angle may be a difficult goal because we don't see any of the past attempts entering the mainstream, and that indicates to me that they didn't really work.
It's a good topic to contemplate and discus, and perhaps the current collaborative opportunities of the internet can lead to something that works well, but personally, a well cut and fit neck heel fastened with co-rods as developed nearly 100 years ago, gives me all the adjustment I need in most cases, so I can't bring myself to expect something significantly better to come along, so I won't be spending much time perusing the idea.

See if Tom Nechville's innovation mentioned above might change your view, at least about banjo neck adjusters.

Sorry for your loss, Joel.
Cheers from Bill.

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Originally posted by hweinberg

See if Tom Nechville's innovation mentioned above might change your view, at least about banjo neck adjusters.

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Not really. It still requires tools so it is no more convenient than co-rods in the field.

"Anvils" and "plungers" that can be out of adjustment, no incremental adjuster for neck angle (just push down and trial-and-error it until the action is close to what we want).

All in all, I can't qualify it as a simple, accurate, foolproof, convenient way to adjust neck angle, and that is what it would take to be a true innovation IMO.

I've been playing with a design to try. I'd be surprised if nobody has done this before though. Here are some images. As drawn it allows for .150" of adjustment.

The dowel with threaded holes has been done before, I don't immediately see an angle adjustment(?).

There is no separate angle adjustment outside of the normal coordinator rods. I'm doing this on CNC so I can get really close on the angle to start with. The raising/lowering doing this method also has a small effect on the angle. My thinking is that this is enough adjustment - am I missing something?

What IF instead of a threaded dowel. there could be three bolts [i.e. a triangle; 2 upper and 1 lower] with the pivot/contact being a ball (?) situated more-or-less centrally within the triangle?  The heads of the bolts would be inside the rim and the "nuts" imbedded (?) in the heel.  All three bolts would be under tension, so my logic/illogic says that up/down and sideways [and even angleways] should be adjustable.  

I'm just thinking (?) out loud; no idea whether it's possible  [given the inherent strength of the materials, needed clearance for tone rings, etc., etc.], or has any practical value or would just create additional problems.   ... or whether it's been tried before.

Standard disclaimer: I'm no luthier... truth be told, probably barely qualify as a putterer.

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Originally posted by euler357...am I missing something?

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I don't think so.

Many banjos have lag holes in the rim big enough to adjust the neck up and down in a similar fashion, as well as some amount of twist to align the neck. Some players are picky about the height of the fingerboard at the rim and others are not, so some would consider using the up-down adjustment and some might not.

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Originally posted by euler357

I've been playing with a design to try. I'd be surprised if nobody has done this before though. Here are some images. As drawn it allows for .150" of adjustment.

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I do that with every neck I make, although usually a square rod. If you give the mortise a little front-to back schnooly, and use oversised holes leading in to the anchor, it allows the neck angle to be changed without bending the threaded ends of the rods.  This is vastly superior to the near universal practice of screwing lag screws into holes drilled into the end grain of the heel often causing the heel to split when the neck angle is changed and the lags bend.

Ludwig had a complex neck adjustment mechanism that allowed a change of neck angle & a side to side adjustment. There is also neck adjusters that have a special bracket on the tail end of the dowel, like on Framus instruments & some American brands.

I am interested in this subject because I am interested in user friendly design in my banjo building practice. and tweaking the action is a real PIA, beyond the abilities of many players— they change a bridge and all kinds of things happen. then they stick pieces of credit cards in between the neck and the tension hoop etc etc.

I would like to use a heel joint on my banjos where there is no complicated heel cut.

Certainly, as Sunburst says, here’s nothing new under the sun and people have been exploring this for a long long time.  I have no desire to copy what Mr Nechville has done—I don’t do that, but I’m particularly interested in some of the earlier things.  As I said in my initial post, I had one of those Sears Roebuck banjos, and I remember the zinc casting they used, I thought it was pretty easy to adjust, but as I recall, the level of the fingerboard to the plane of the head would get messed up as would the gap between the end of the fingerboard to the tension hoop,so it wasn't quite there yet..  Squeezing the neck against the tension hoop is a no-no to me because it makes it hard to adjust the head tension.
Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of those—they were pretty good, I think.  You can see how it worked.

I tried a vaguely similar thing on a banjo I built in 1976 called the “LeVastertone”, with a heel anchor and you had to adjust the brass plate by filing it, so too cumbersome, but it worked and you didn’t have to cut the heel. Close but no cigar.

The Vega set-screw concept was very good, and I remember it from a PS5 I saw in 1962— I thought it was very clever.  

The problem with it was twofold—you needed a rim that could be drilled and threaded, and perceptually, it went against the “conventional wisdom” of the day, as so many good ideas (still) do. There was a pervasive belief that the neck had to sit against the pot perfectly with no air space, so set screws would create gaps and the sound would escape, or something like that. Of course nowadays plenty of builders cut a 10-inch diameter arc  on the heel with a tablesaw, and so only the edges contact, which works perfectly well—the fit just has to be tight with no movement, not full-contact, the rim rods transferring much of the energy from the neck into the pot, but back then, people didn’t like it and when Martin (who knew very little about banjos and did dovetail heel joints in their guitars) bought Vega they promptly got rid of the whole set screw idea and the rest is history.

I made a pot like this and it worked perfectly well— the banjo sounded every bit as good as it had before I did this, but you could do mini adjustments ao the action and alignment

 So anyway, I am tending towards something like that ,maybe with a special threadable insert laminated into the rim.  The other idea would be some carbon fiber molded part that would fit perfectly to the pot, maybe a combination of the two — it would be nice to make a flat heel cut and have an interface fit from that to the pot, that could be 2 degrees, 3 degrees, whatever you needed for the design. and you'd never have to recut the heel or shim anything.

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Originally posted by Ken LeVan

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Originally posted by euler357

I've been playing with a design to try. I'd be surprised if nobody has done this before though. Here are some images. As drawn it allows for .150" of adjustment.

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I do that with every neck I make, although usually a square rod. If you give the mortise a little front-to back schnooly, and use oversised holes leading in to the anchor, it allows the neck angle to be changed without bending the threaded ends of the rods.  This is vastly superior to the near universal practice of screwing lag screws into holes drilled into the end grain of the heel often causing the heel to split when the neck angle is changed and the lags bend.

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Is your heel cap removable?  I'm thinking about using 3 screws on it so this can be fixed if/when a future person screws up the threads in the dowel.  

That's a nice top tension hoop setup - are you making those?

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Originally posted by euler357

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Is your heel cap removable?  I'm thinking about using 3 screws on it so this can be fixed if/when a future person screws up the threads in the dowel.  

That's a nice top tension hoop setup - are you making those?

 

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I make a threaded hole in the tops of my anchors, which makes it easier to get them out if needed.  I have made some heel caps that attach by a screw into that hole, but I normally don'tdo that.

As for the tension hoop / bracket band, thanks for asking—that's my top-tension construction. Most banjos I make nowadays are like that—no nuts protruding to jab you in the leg, and it's very easy to attach the resonator. I attach the flange to the resonator as opposed to the pot, so you can remove it and have a clean open-back.

I once in the late sixtes had a German Framus banjo. The middle of the heel was just a little bit higher than both the top and the bottom of the heel and served as a kind of pivot (I think is the word). The rim rod was very solid and in the bottom of it (on the rim) was a primitive device with a screw, that could turn the neck backwords when tightened and forwards when loosened. Inside the banjo was a screw that went into the bottom of the heel. So when the neck was adjusted you could tighten that one and make a "kind of connection" between the rim and the heel. I hope this is understandable.
Framus banjos were quite popular in Denmark at that time. They were inexpensive and sounded often way better than they looked (which the also ought to).
In Copenhagen lived at the same time two very respected banjomakers Peter B. Petersen and Just Poulsen. Their top line bajos were very fine and beautiful banjos (look them up on the net. Polle Flaunø used to have a big collection of such things). I have one of Peter B.´s high end five stringers and inside that is also a quite solid rim rod. In the bottom there is a smart device with two screws. With one you can lower the neck and with the other you can raise it. There is nothing to pull the neck against the rim, and it seems like neither of these two makers paid as much attention to the neck to pot connection as we do here on BHO. But it is impossible (for anyone) not to love the sound and look of this banjo. Steen

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Originally posted by Ken LeVan

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Originally posted by euler357

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Is your heel cap removable?  I'm thinking about using 3 screws on it so this can be fixed if/when a future person screws up the threads in the dowel.  

That's a nice top tension hoop setup - are you making those?

 

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I make a threaded hole in the tops of my anchors, which makes it easier to get them out if needed.  I have made some heel caps that attach by a screw into that hole, but I normally don'tdo that.

 

As for the tension hoop / bracket band, thanks for asking—that's my top-tension construction. Most banjos I make nowadays are like that—no nuts protruding to jab you in the leg, and it's very easy to attach the resonator. I attach the flange to the resonator as opposed to the pot, so you can remove it and have a clean open-back.

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That's great.  Thanks for your responses on this.  BTW - I found your episode of Smithsonian Banjo Builders inspiring.  Your comment about glue surface area on bent vs block rims made sense to me and when I saw your experiment with the finger joints on the rim, I added an alignment tab and dowel holes for alignment between layers to my CNC'd rim segments which allows for easy alignment while gluing them.  Here are a few photos of where I'm at right now.  I'm trying to post the process on my website at https://cockrumstudios.com also.  

Ken, Taylor guitars have bolt on necks that have wooden "washer" inserts that allow for adjustment of the neck. Could you not form something like this to adjust the neck angle?

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Originally posted by GMB

Ken, Taylor guitars have bolt on necks that have wooden "washer" inserts that allow for adjustment of the neck. Could you not form something like this to adjust the neck angle?

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That's kind of what I'm thinking, but carbon fiber is easier to make into very thin accurate sections than wood, which tends to break. Plus I don't have a CNC router

Posted in wrong thread....

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The Framus gizmo works real nice as it lets you cjange the neck angle on the fly: no need to take off the strings, just crank it up/down to set it to you favourite bridge height (range,, as-is approx 1/2~5/8")

Some people will have a problem with the neck not properly touching the rim. Yes, in fact it's not touching the rim at all and there's  quite a gap as you can clearly see. This Framus has been my own go-to over the many years and I can assure you that this gap does not at all hinder performance. Oh, the block rim on this one is an exotic hardwood one I made a bunch of years ago.

A real simple neck angle changing way is to use a no-frill L-bracket: one "leg" of the L against the dowel rod, the other "leg" WITH AN ELONGATED SCREW HOLE against the inside of the rim and the regular dowel rod screw will hold it in place. Sorry, couldn't find any pics of it but there's been a few that were posted on the Hangout over the years.

The Framus gizmo way though, one huge benefit: with the strings on, crank the neck angle go up & down and don't be surprised if the sound/tone all of a sudden becomes "bigger." Yup, quite a treat to experience that and another nice side effect is that the intonation also becomes way better.