quote:

---

Originally posted by BanjoDaddy2000

I don’t know if there’s anything on a rim that would make this idea not feasible.

Like the neck maybe?

 

---

Flange mount as well

Not gonna work.

you can already get conversion ring to swap out without flipping the rim over. And some banjos are built to be interchangeable like a nechville.

Yes.
I didn't want to alter the original Cox neck on my "Fox" banjo once owned by Bob French.I wanted an 11/16 bridge instead of the 5/8 it came with so I took an RK rim and cut into it where the bottom of the heel contacted.
I chiseled and sanded a 3/16 notch which laid the neck back.
Anyone could have 3 or 4 different depth notches with their corresponding rod holes for a variety of conditions.

Try a metal ring on one side and a hardwood ring on the other. The bracket shoes would have to be spaced equidistantly from the top edge of each ring. I’d rather make two banjos but that’s just me…..

Maybe you could mount the neck in a way that it can be rotated 180 degrees. Then you could put a head on each side of the rim too, and go back and forth on the fly for different tone rings.

The idea sounds like a solution in search of a problem. One thing I see wrong with the idea is that the bracket shoes would all have to be taken off and turned over each time you switched from one tone ring to the other. Using a flange would be impractical. It seems easier to just use two banjos. Taking the time to switch everything would be a half-day job.
I used to have a Gibson RB100 with two tone hoops, one 10" archtop, and one 11" flat top. It took about two hours just to swap heads and rings, then get the banjo restrung and set up. It would take a lot longer to do what you propose.

banjos need time to settle in after beng taken apart so you'd be better off with separate banjos.

Stew-Mac used to make an archtop tone ring #802 that fits a flathead rim, and was meant to switch out from flathead to archtop. But it failed because you can't exactly switch out between songs.

BTW it's a great tone ring and I have two of them, but I never switched them. Even when I did have their flathead I just had two banjos.

The only way I could see this being workable is to have a smaller ring inside a larger ring, and when you push a lever it would move up and create an archtop. Drop it down and it would be a flathead. That might work, but it wouldn't sound that great since each component would basically be a rolled brass ring.

That might make some interesting effects, like a whammy bar on electric guitars.