The main issues with the banjo were: 1) The nut was too low, so the strings were actually resting on the fingerboard; 2) The frets had not been filed properly along the side of the neck and were very sharp; 3) The 5th string was resting in a groove in the 5th fret and was buzzing; 4) The neck angle is too low.
I removed the old plastic nut and replaced it with a bone nut. I spent about an hour filing down the edges of the frets, securing loose frets, and then leveling the frets. I decided to install a small brass screw for the 5th string so that the string would be high enough to clear the fret and not buzz. This led to another problem in that the 5th string tuner was at the wrong angle and the string did not want to stay in the groove on the screw. I then had to put in a spike to put the 5th string under so that the string would then stay in the screw groove. The banjo has a slightly short neck. It is two frets shorter than a normal 5-string banjo neck. In order the make the banjo play in tune, I had to move the bridge all the way to the back edge of the banjo head. The string height was still high, so I had to lower the bridge, since there is no truss rod or coordinator rod. (You can see from the pictures that the neck is made of one piece and attaches to the pot of the banjo in such a way that there is no neck adjustment available.)
Since the banjo does not have a regular banjo head, it is very quiet. This would make a great practice banjo for someone in an apartment or any place where the loudness of a banjo would be impractical or a nuisance. A pickup would make this banjo loud enough to be heard in a group. The head is actually a beautiful piece of walnut. The rest of the banjo is oak. The overall tone of the banjo is more like a harpsichord, I think. It has a very unique sound to it.
For anyone, especially a 16-year old, this is a quality piece of work -- even if it is somewhat non-standard. I have included some pictures and a sound clip for your enjoyment! If you click on the pictures, they will enlarge.
Click here for soundclip.
5 comments:
Beautiful peice of work there :)
And it sounds great!
Have you ever heard of a banjo maker by the name of Clifford Biltz?
I knew Cliff Biltz. He was my landlord when I was a college student in Oxford, Ohio. I was in his shop several times.
Wow, small world. I rented out a room in Cliff's house in Oxford when I was a student at Miami U. He had musicians from all over the country coming to his house to buy his banjos, usually late at night. Apparently they would come visit him when they finished playing a gig, which was sometimes a few hours away. Late at night I would hear them playing as I was drifting off to sleep. One night I heard somebody playing that was heads and shoulders above everything else I had heard in that house. I was SO tempted to creep down the stairs and peak around the corner to see who it was, but sleep won. The next day when I saw Cliff I asked him, who was playing banjo last night? Cliff proudly replied that it was Roy Clark. I once saw Clark playing that banjo on TV, with "Biltz" on the headstock. Cliff Biltz was a real artist.
August 3, 1973 I purchased a banjo from Clifford Biltz (signed and dated); an opened-back Little Vega Wonder (circa from the 1920s) with his custom hand built five-string neck. He had talked me into commissioning him to build one for me--after my sister and I, who lived nearby, had heard about him. We would visit him in the evenings about once a month for over a year. I was told by Clifford that the abalone used in the neck came from his daughter who was living in Spain at the time. The peg head top is rosewood that he was given or bought from someone who had worked at Miami U. This person had found stacks of it covered in dust in a far corner of a basement in one of the buildings (perhaps to be demolished?) and Cliff acquired the rosewood somehow. I remember Clifford showing me his basement where he worked and the stacks of wood he had there, including the maple that was used to make my banjo neck. I remember being stunned at the weight of a small block of rosewood, which he had to handed me for just that purpose. Today I Googled his name just to see if there were any references to him!
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