Hi Gents! The banjo is a heavy instrument. It is commonly believed that the heavier a banjo is, the better its quality and sound; indeed, banjos from top brands are invariably heavy or very heavy. Back when I was gigging, lugging around 6 or 7 kg of banjo-plus-case did my back no favors. However, I do have two very lightweight instruments at home: one is an unknown brand weighing just 1 kg, and the other is a vintage Gibson "trapdoor" model—slightly heavier, but still within an acceptable range. The lighter one sounds terrible; to try and improve the action and tone a bit, I had to use a mute and install an extremely low bridge. I’ve attached a demo video showing both instruments in use.
youtube.com/watch?v=PvJchwV3Btk
Excellent!
I enjoyed your presentation.
Yours in Birmingham,
MrP
Thank you Eddy!
Marco you could play also a bisquit box with a broomstik as neck and make it swing!
I love your playing on every kind of banjo… btw the trapdoor sounds really good! :-)
Yeah man you play so nice you can make a cheap banjo sound fine.
So indeed even the lightweight one would be perfectly acceptable as a gigging banjo.
Will
Paolo and Will, thank you for your nice comments!
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