Haha!

Good on you for seeing all of it through, and congratulations on successfully dialing it in!

Sounds like you had to take the long road to get there, but there’s something noble about going through the motions via a methodical “leave no stone unturned” approach… at least I think so.

Gotta be a lot less of those nagging “what ifs” in the back of your mind… plus the accumulated wisdom of hearing those changes over time in a concrete way.

I mean, my wife would say it’s all a waste of time lol. But I get it and applaud ya!

And I'll have to give one of those snuffy's a try sometime

You are fortunate to be in the USA where heads are readily available. Importing heads from the US involves both the exchange rate and shipping. I get mine from Bob Smakula in bulk for my repair business and for myself. Not sure what i am going to do when Bob retires next tear.

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Originally posted by banjonz

You are fortunate to be in the USA where heads are readily available. Importing heads from the US involves both the exchange rate and shipping. I get mine from Bob Smakula in bulk for my repair business and for myself. Not sure what i am going to do when Bob retires next tear.

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What? Bob is retiring? I get stuff from him too! 

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Originally posted by TimFoster

...Gotta be a lot less of those nagging “what ifs” in the back of your mind… plus the accumulated wisdom of hearing those changes over time in a concrete way.

...I mean, my wife would say it’s all a waste of time lol. But I get it and applaud ya!

...And I'll have to give one of those snuffy's a try sometime

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I'm a retired jet enjine mechanic... I NEED something to tinker with! And it's always nice to know for sure, than to loose sleep at night wondering how different things might work. Sometimes it can be counter intuitive. Like string gauges. I've been suprised at heavier strings sounding dead, and lighter strings surprisingly powerful. My wife actually understands, as she is a seemstress, and always experimenting with her sewing machine collection, and projects. Keeps us happy and busy! 
 

Definately try a SS compression bridge. I tried a lot of boutique bridges in the past, and stopped all that when the smile bridge came out. It beat them all. Not necessarily for tone, but for playability and not sagging. But the slight radius of the SSCC bridge improves the playability even more, and the tone smokes the smile. 

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Originally posted by Dean T

I’m doing the same as Tim Foster, with dialing in what I consider a banjo I’ll play to my grave. In the last year, I’ve tried a handful of heads on it. Other than its original frosted head, the only one I really liked is the white suede. It sounded good at home, and band practice, but on a friends video, it just didn’t sound
Iike my banjo. I’m happy with my string choice, and REALLY like the Snuffy compression bridge, and today I went back to the frosted head… and oh la la I got my banjo back!

My head collection includes a 30 year old frosted, two renascence, fiberskin, SkinTone, white suede, and my banjos original frosted that I put back on today. Anything other than frosted seems to take a little sauce out of my banjo.

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Hey Dean, glad to hear you found your sound. I've busted a few heads over the years on my Ibanez. Is that a no hole tone ring? And also the goo gone. What do you use that for? I've always been leery of that stuff around my instruments because of the solvent content. (Used it some around the house when the kids were small).