Waddo Soqable

There's quite a few old banjos of various types turn up on ebay, sometimes quite cheap, tho usually needing work. I'm fixing up another little mandolin banjo for someone else at the mo, which was basically falling apart. I've got the soaking bits of goat skin down to a fine art now !

This is the one I have it was rescued, very cheap from ebay as a pile of bits, i had to soak and stretch a natural skin over the drum part as the original was shredded, and steal some violin pegs for tuners as they were missing. To my surprise, turns out its from the early 1890s ! I didn't bother with the little drone string at the top as I didn't have another peg, plus it's more straightforward as a 4 string anyway.

Banjo now eh ! If the neck is straight i wouldn't fool with truss rods or coordinator rods ( if it has them) Your solution to effectively raise the bridge I'd say is the best one. On the couple of banjos I've messed with I've had the opposite and needed to drop the bridge, in actuality I just made another much lower bridge from a sliver of hard wood, job done. If the drum heads a bit slack it probably wouldnt hurt to tweak it, depending on how it sounds at the mo. I hope to hear a banjo and suitcase symphony from you very shortly

Glad that drilling went ok ! Looks great bolted up anyway..phew.. ps .. if it were me I'd try a few control plate template shapes from cardboard and "try them on" to see which you prefer pps. I reckon a stingray plate would work well, and not look like theres "a bit missing" !

Fck me, that's quality right there...👍 Well worth a £ coin of anyone's money chucked in the paper cup on the deck

Certainly guilty of that myself, I did a stint of the "art college" thing, until i got slung out for never turning up, due to spending all my time doing band stuff ..luckily they never asked for their dosh back..

Second hand Ricks and Ps in decent nick were about 200 quid in the late 70s.

If you substitute a Ukulele banjo or something for the guitar, it'd fit nicely into the suitcase too Handy when running away from the police etc...

With your acoustic gig, i hope you'll have the old cymbals strapped between yer knees thing too 👍

Just a thought (and you've prob thought if this already) If you set your pillar drill somewhere flat getting the "table" level in both orientations with a small spirit level, you can final check your set up with the spirit level on the flat back "pocket" surface of the neck before drilling....in theory should be then true for drilling straight holes !

Definitely worth taking time to set it up properly for drilling, I've screwed this up in the past and done wonky holes ! Good luck anyway 👍, it's one of those jobs I'd not be looking forward to !

Do you envisage being the drummer in a busk-ensemble, or is it to accompany yourself playing a guitar or whatever a'la traditional 'one man band' type of thing ?

Shudda fitted a double pedal... Wudda been good for metal...

I don't myself recall ever seeing anyone playing one in the first incarnation of punk, and we saw loads of bands then.. They weren't really that available i guess, compared to P basses that were everywhere, and ratty ones obtainable pretty cheap. I first got a stingray about 1980 in a swap of some sort i think, altough by then we were very much "post punk" ps, I'd say a stingray is never a "poor choice"

I don't think Rickenbacker really want any more business than they already have, has been my impression. They presumably are tooled up and staffed to produce X amount of instruments per year, and I guess are happy to tick over at that rate without feeling the need to "grow". What I would do, if I was put in charge, would be to immediately go into production of a "Squier" type range of Rick basses, manufactured obviously in the far east. That would be a goldmine IMHO.

Me too

My guitar's tuned like a banjo

Weren't the frets on those just gut strings tied on ? I assume they could easily be fine tuned to the different "temperaments" they used..

Chrome

I'm assuming the DBs would have been somewhat before the Gibson era.. Shame they don't do a cheapo Epi double bass these days !

I was surprised to find that Epiphone made double basses too..

Coincidentally I've used exactly that tuning in some industrial metally thing years ago. I just tuned a headless 4string bass with "normal" strings down to this, and it was fine, as far as I was concerned anyway. I'd just add it wasn't named as above, in fact wasn't given a name at all to my knowledge, I just clumsily described it as "like drop D but all down with the lowest note as C"

Have a go at starting one, what's to lose ? At least if it's "your" thing you can steer it in the direction you want, and choose who you play with.

Cool, reminds me of Red Prysock's playing

I believe they do a Servisol version with an added lube to address the issue mentioned above, that said the regular stuff has worked for me fine. The Deoxit I've certainly heard of, and has a good rep too so take your pick really.