When I was playing semi-regularly for dances, I took two banjos, both C Essex WL clones which sounded almost identical. One was in G, the other A (no capo). Since I play in standard C tuning, retuning for D was quick. But at a festival or camp out, roaming around, I had one banjo and retuned and capoed accordingly. IMO, don’t spend on a second banjo unless you regularly play at sit-down jams and/or dances where switching instruments is feasible. Not worth it for occasional such sessions. If you do, get a full-scale banjo. You’ll find it handy to have; you can keep a capo on when you play. Or you can do as I did, tuning it up two frets. I used .01 lighter strings on my A banjo. The feel matched well.

I usually take two, one in G and a short scale in DD. However, if necessary, I just take the std., a capo and retune as needed.

Seems to me, in old time, retuning is part of the show - gives the player time to tell some amusing anecdote or historical background on the tune or whatever while retuning...

quote:Originally posted by trapdoor2I usually take two, one in G and a short scale in DD. However, if necessary, I just take the std., a capo and retune I

Is the short scale better for tuning to double D?

Our local OT Jams are "Banjo Friendly". We take an initial poll to select a key to start with. Going around the circle everyone gets to pick a tune in that key. The circle is always large so it will take an hour or more to play those fiddle tunes.

Then we take another poll for a key change and allow all us banjo players to retune. Then we stay with the second key and start around the circle again.

At our Monday contra dances, our fiddler will often pair two tunes in different keys for a single dance. While i could take a second banjo, I prefer to retune and can do that quickly. I may drop out of the B Part of the first tune to retune and then be ready to at the start of the second tune. Lately, I have been playing through to the end of the first tune, retune during Part A of the second tune and join in on Part B. 

We have limited space on stage and a second banjo would crowd things.  Also, our fiddler calls the tunes right before we play them, so there's little time to tune two banjos before we start playing. Plus I think I can retune as quickly as I could switch banjos. 

David

I have a 'few' banjos. I keep one in G, one in D-Minor, one in 'Drop C', and the rest are in various states of tune. YOU NEED MORE BANJOS!

I carry 24 banjos around, one for each major and minor key.

When I first started, I did have two banjos set up in different tunings to quickly swap back and forth while practicing.

But with practice it only takes me a few seconds to go between G/C/D tuning (A/D/E with capo 2). So I guess it depends on your goals and reasoning.

If playing live having a backup banjo isn't unreasonable in case something goes wrong with one.

If you have the spare funds, buy more banjos… I have 3, all tuned differently.
Retuning is easy once you get the knack of it, you can never have enough banjos… ????