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I'm seeing a local 5 string long-neck Toredo banjo going for only $75, although almost an hour's drive away.
I don't yet own a functioning banjo, but the idea of a long-neck banjo intrigues me as I'd love to be able to play it with a lower than standard tuning while the intonation remains in-tact (when set up).
Thing is, I keep reading about how long-neck banjos will be rather expensive, yet this is $75 used. And I can't find any info at all other than another thread on this forum about Toredo in general, saying they're likely mass-produced beginner banjoes, but I can't imagine a long-neck banjo would be considered a beginner banjo. Thoughts? Think it'd be of good value, or say, higher quality than the local Fender PB-180E going for $200? I am weary of huge name brands like Fender as they've greatly reduced their production quality across all instruments, so I'd be a $200 Fender may be more in line with a significantly cheaper banjo of similar quality.
Toredo was indeed the name put on Japanese-made instruments for a specific US importer, C Meisel Music Company from New Jersey.
This means lots of identical instruments were produced by the Japanese manufacturer, then shipped all over the world with the name requested by the importer/distributor. In some cases the importer might be a music retailer large enough to place its own orders have its own private or house brand put on the instruments. Such was the case with Veneman Music here in the DC area that sold Asian-made "Bradley" instruments. But I digress.
Most of the instruments produced this way were in fact beginner or first level intermediate instruments, because that was the market that US manufacturers had abandoned. The big Chicago manufacturer(s) who made National, Kay, Harmony, and the Montgomery Ward Airline and Sears Silvertone instruments through the 60s, had by the early 70s either off-shored manufacture to Japan or had sold out to others who did that.
My recollection (being in my teens and 20s back then) is these makers did produce some slightly higher level instruments. But I think the Japanese producing instruments that matched the top US makers in quality, while also beating them on price, was still a few years away.
So, your banjo as a long neck may be a bit above a total beginners' level instrument, but it was most likely much lower priced than what was available from US makers at the time. All that differential did not come from cheaper labor. There are probably aspects of materials or design that helped this banjo cost less.
And my point in going on at length is to convey that no one means anything pejorative or derogatory about your possibly very good banjo when they say it could have been a budget-priced beginners' instrument. Those of us who were buying our first instruments in the 1960s and 1970s remember the niche filled by the Japanese offerings. My first two banjos were made in Japan. Plenty of us started on low-level Asian instruments. Today, the Asian factories also produce aspirational instruments.
Pictures will help us better evaluate the quality of what you have. But all the available evidence points to it being a private name applied to imported instruments for a New Jersey music company.
Edited by - Old Hickory on 10/06/2024 17:41:27
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