depscribe's photos with the keyword: banjo

All done and shipped in time for graduation. I'm told she liked it. It wasn't an inexpensive project, but the result was far better than anything one could get for far more money.

The personalized inlay done by Bob White is visible -- nice but not too flashy, I thought.

The slant of the bridge, the tailpiece, and the unique Vega armrest are visible here. While I usually do only real skin heads, those require attention and I wasn't sure Zoë would want to fuss with that. So I used a plastic head that comes closest to replicating the calfskin sound.

I photographed the finished product outside, because there was no place inside that didn't have a distracting background.

The refinishing and assembly are completed. The tailpiece is a clamshell, which was the sort that Marjorie said Zoë preferred. The bridge is made of old, submerged wood, and tilts toward the tailpiece for improved tone and volume.

I had him do a little inlay work, which we'll see more closely in a bit.

Here, Bob slots the nut for the fifth string, located part way down the neck.

Vega five-string banjo necks are not off-the-shelf items. I was able to find and obtain -- they're not cheap -- a perfect reproduction made by the great Wyatt Fawley. Rather than risk ruining it, I had local legend Bob White cut the string slots in the nut. He did some other things as well to make the Zoëphone special.

The finish on the resonator had been scratched and was awful, so this was necessary. I've already replaced the tortoise shell binding top and bottom -- and that at top and bottom, inside and out, in the rim. Vega cut no corners in the old days, and I wasn't going to, either. The instrument, and Zoë, deserved a perfect job.

I polished out the corrosion from the tension ring and sent all the hardware off to FQMS for replating. It would take several weeks, but there was plenty to do in the meantime.

My friend Marjorie Thompson wanted to give a banjo to her daughter Zoë as a high school graduation present. I said I could build one better than can be bought. The best banjos ever, in my view, are Vegas from the early 20th century. After shopping around, I found this Vega Tubaphone Professional pot, from the late 1920s. I'd already steamed the four-string neck from the dowel stick -- both pot and dowel stick have serial numbers, and they must match.