I sat in at a gig with some old friends last week in Arizona, and they provided me with a borrowed banjo. It was an old Washburn - I don't know the year or model, but it had a tone ring and a decent sound. The biggest problem I had was with the tuners - they were very fussy and I only had to touch the knob slightly to go way out of tune. The back of the tuner was not round like a planetary, but a sealed rounded rectangular shape with 2 mounting screws, one at each narrow end of the rectangle. I have not been able to find a matching image on the internet.
It occurred to me that these might have been 2:1 ratio which made them to hard to get in tune. Is that possible?
Edited by - sdfarris on 10/17/2025 08:04:46
Depending on the vintage of the banjo it is entirely possible. I owned a Washburn once, it would be over or near a 100 years old. It had friction tuners and back then I replaced them with 5 Star, probably the best tuners available in the 1970's or at least much better than the friction tuners it had on it. Since then there have been tons of banjos made under that name with limited value.
Were they the Kluson sorta-firebird type? ...or an asian knockoff, depending on the age/origin of the Washburn.
Edited by - pinenut on 10/17/2025 09:21:40
Were they like these Grover pancake tuners? I think they are 2:1, so I have read...
https://www.banjohangout.org/archive/220726
Edited by - pinenut on 10/17/2025 13:46:26
I'm sure it was a 1970s Japanese Washburn banjo with the same era tuners that were also used on guitars of the same era. I'm sure everything was pretty cheap and budget. The tuners stuck out the side like a guitar?
quote:
Originally posted by staceyzI'm sure it was a 1970s Japanese Washburn banjo with the same era tuners that were also used on guitars of the same era. I'm sure everything was pretty cheap and budget. The tuners stuck out the side like a guitar?
Ok, the tuners on that banjo were worn out due to lack of lubrication. Brand doesn't matter. They are easily replaced and should be. A '70s Washburn with guitar tuners isn't valuable enough to matter if the tuner footprint matches or not.
