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Hi, I'm new to the forum, thanks for having me! Signed up as I need help identifying an old tenor banjo I recently acquired together with a guitar I was interested in (I'm a guitarist and bassist, not a banjo player - sorry!).
I am attaching some photos in the hope that someone might have an idea what it is, there are virtually no markings whatsoever on the entire instrument, inside or out. I did some minor repairs to make it playable again, main item was a new bridge I made (I build and repair guitars and basses in my spare-time, not professionally), other than that I replaced a few felt pads (the original ones were green, if that helps?) and put on new strings, that's it really. Will probably need to have a proper set-up and cleaning at some point, plus it needs a new nut and one hook is missing (if that's what they're called). It also has some ugly remnants of previous repairs that were done in the past, glue splattered everywhere etc., I'll take care of that too once I get round to it.
I live in Munich/Germany and that's also where I got the banjo, my impression from searching online though is that it seems more North-American than European to me, but as I said, I'm a novice to banjos ...
Thanks for looking and if anybody has any insights I'd appreciate it very much! :-)
KR,
Niels
Edited by - nc65 on 10/08/2024 01:09:28
The shoes and hooks look like Slingerland. The rim has a Slingerland look as well but fancier than I've seen. Likewise the resonator hardware looks Slingerland, is it a 10 3/4" rim? https://www.centremusic.com/shop/c/p/1920s-Slingerlands-Nite-Hawk-Tenor-Banjo-wCase-USED-x63748502.htm . The headstock is not the normal Slingerland shape.
My guess is Slingerland may have made it for another company or a company sourced parts from them.
Thanks so much for your reply! This kind of ties in with basically the only lead I could find online, but I couldn't assess whether it made sense, so I didn't mention it earlier. The hardware (I guess what you more correctly refer to as shoes and hooks) seemed to be similar to some "Sterling" (not "Stelling") banjos I saw on Google, and there was a couple of references/discussions (I think possibly even on this site here?) that linked Sterling to Slingerland, saying that Slingerland had produced banjos for, amongst others, Sterling, which apparently was a label owned/used by the Tonk Brothers, who seem to have had some of their banjos made by Slingerland ... So it might by a Slingerland or more likely a Slingerland-made banjo sold under a different label. I had hoped the headstock would be a clue as I couldn't find another one on-line that looked exactly the same, i.e. the shape of the top end and the over-all longish shape. Thanks again, Niels