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Originally posted by EEB

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

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Originally posted by EEB

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

Which are the popular/preferred vintage U.S banjos for finger-style?

It might be interesting to start a thread on the use of modern banjos for finger-style? I can almost hear the brittle crunching as purist’s teeth clench down on briar pipe stems!

 

I think I hear them!

but I would be interested in that too. I assume that the starting point would be open back?

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Fingerstyle could be played on any type of banjo. Fretless and flush fret, any size rim, any scale length. I've only owned one tenor banjo,  a Clifford Essex Clipper, and I played that finger-style. A vintage model at the lower end of their range but it had a beautiful warm tone played with bare fingers. Not at all a tone we normally associate with the tenor banjo.

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I don't know when resonators were invented but when I see really old pictures of banjo players they always seemed to be holding open back banjos. 
I have gobs of resonator banjos so I thought this would be the perfect excuse to get an open back. 
 

you're not helping. 

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You need help? 
 

Gobs of resonator banjos? Buy an openback, and something cheap that will pass muster as a removable 'resonator'. Car wheel trim, circular bread board, a dinner plate at a push. Camoflage on entry and that's mission accomplished.

A friend of a close friend has a thing for acquiring shotguns. He stains each new arrival the same dark colour. His wife thinks he just has one.

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I can't. Our relationship is centered around honesty and trust. 
but why does she get that funny look on her face when I tell her "but they all sound COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!"?

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

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Originally posted by EEB

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

Which are the popular/preferred vintage U.S banjos for finger-style?

It might be interesting to start a thread on the use of modern banjos for finger-style? I can almost hear the brittle crunching as purist’s teeth clench down on briar pipe stems!

 

I think I hear them!

but I would be interested in that too. I assume that the starting point would be open back?

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Fingerstyle could be played on any type of banjo. Fretless and flush fret, any size rim, any scale length. I've only owned one tenor banjo,  a Clifford Essex Clipper, and I played that finger-style. A vintage model at the lower end of their range but it had a beautiful warm tone played with bare fingers. Not at all a tone we normally associate with the tenor banjo.

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I don't know when resonators were invented but when I see really old pictures of banjo players they always seemed to be holding open back banjos. 
I have gobs of resonator banjos so I thought this would be the perfect excuse to get an open back. 
 

you're not helping. 

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Below is an article from Feb. 1914.


 

As I have written many times in the past, the "modern banjo" is only different in design to adapt for plectrum playing. Neck heel angle in relation to the head, resulting action and bridge height, gear tuners, large frets, steel strings, and reenforcement for the same.

That said, as long as the string pitch is relative to gCGBD and the general gamut is at least 19 frets (this will cover most anything published) any banjo may be used to play any of the published music regardless of string composition, action height, or fingerpicks.

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Originally posted by Joel Hooks

As I have written many times in the past, the "modern banjo" is only different in design to adapt for plectrum playing. Neck heel angle in relation to the head, resulting action and bridge height, gear tuners, large frets, steel strings, and reenforcement for the same.

That said, as long as the string pitch is relative to gCGBD and the general gamut is at least 19 frets (this will cover most anything published) any banjo may be used to play any of the published music regardless of string composition, action height, or fingerpicks.

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You make a point, but you're missing the simple, anecdotal point that I'm alluding to.

Viewed as a technique, there is no inherent requirement for a player to restrict their focus to gCGBD and relative tuning, nor the historic repertoire or use a vintage instrument. The one example of contemporary finger-style uploaded to this forum section, Laurence's playing of an original piece on a modern banjo, instantly demonstrated that innate transferability.

The historic finger-style canon is an immense and rich resource. A resource of beauty and talent that quietly represents the legacy of a much wider banjo-culture root spread (in my case, as a Somerset boy with an ocean between us, those banjo roots reach and can be found today in my own tiny village community and right across my immediate local area, as I described previously). But as in the proverb about horses and water...the assumption that retrospective repertoire is an 'imperative' and the 'be-all-and-end-all' is actually a product of an appropriation that  ironically, has contributed to stasis  and the backgrounding of the technique as a natural creative choice.

Creativity is enabled not channelled  :-)