6-string banjo?

[Sesop]

I have a couple of 5-string banjos, which I love, and a few 6-string guitars which I also love. The idea of a 6-string banjo seems like a good idea, but I wonder if its just a novelty that doesn't have much practical applications.

Does anyone have one? Want one? What kind of stuff do you play with it? Do you tune it like a banjo or a guitar?

[Dan Carey]

Don't have one, don't want one. But that's just me.
Yes, you tune it like a guitar. That's about all that I know about them.

BUT, my son did just buy me a 5 string banjo and I'm thrilled with it!

[CharlieG]

I sat next to one in a jam once. I don't know if it was the instrument or the player but I disliked the sound so much I left the jam. It was tuned like a guitar.

[bobdcat]

I had one of these Hondos for a few months.

Never really took to it, though, so I sold it. When I need a banjo fix, I pull out my little tenor for a while. Then I'm cured.

[EScottG]

I have a cheap one and really enjoy it to accompany some songs. I fingerpick it. But, if I could play an actual banjo (i wish), I would do that instead.

Scott

[GerryinAZ]

They're marketed for guitar players that want to get "That banjo sound".

There are many seisiuns and jams I have attended at which if you came in and tried to play one you would "invited" to not play.

If you have a hankerin' to play the banjo, I would recommend a tenor banjo as mentioned in the above post.

A tenor is a 4-string banjo and it's usually pretty easy to learn fiddle tunes on them. Especially if you already are fairly proficient on another stringed instrument and know your way around a fretboard. I say this more for general reading as the OP already has banjos' and obviously knows his way around one!

[Bingoccc]

Old King..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXvXCtXkd68

Neil got away with it.

[GerryinAZ]

Originally Posted by Bingoccc

Old King..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXvXCtXkd68

Neil got away with it.

Neil doesn't care.

Gotta lov'em!

[Doubleneck]

Couple of things, I purchased a Deering B6 open back maple tone ring and simply love it. It is a very high quality rig which may help? Set up better than almost all my guitars. The maple tone ring tends to gets you out of the blue grass thing which is fine.

I have heard so many people put the six string down as not really a banjo and after having so much fun with it for a month, I think that is a shame. They are a hoot.

But to me you need to approach it as its own instrument actually much more flexible than a 5 string to me. I have been using it in our praise band at church for usually one song a week. People love it, because it can take a song you have done the same way for years and make it totally new. Very cool. Even my praise band is getting into it.

[Hobo_King]

6 string banjos have been around a long time and are just as much a real Banjo as 4 or 5 strings. I think there are a few issues with why they get little respect in modern days. One is there are some really bad cheap import versions available and tempting for someone who wants to experiment with one to go to due to the price point. Another is you can't just play it like you would a guitar, there is a learning curve for it to sound like a banjo. I prefer a 4 string myself but would like a 6 string too eventually to go with my Tenor, Plectrum and 5 string banjos. I'd use it in standard tuning for tunes where I want a banjo sound but with a bit more bass than you get from a 4 string. Or just a different voice for a guitar part. I'm sure if you show up to a bluegrass jam with a 4 string there those who would give you the stink eye just as much as you had a 6 string. People get very set in what they thing is proper instrumentation.

[Cue Zephyr]

Don't have one, don't want one either. What I do want, is a 5-string resonator banjo. What is cool though, is Brad Davis playing a 6-string banjo: http://youtu.be/WoUr_vbAXU4

I'll admit, it sounds pretty darn cool!

[Wade Hampton]

I play five string banjo, and have a nice one. I also own a Deering B6 guitar-banjo, and absolutely love it. To me it's become a necessary part of my musical toolkit.

Sometimes I get mildly irked at five string banjo players who claim that the guitar-banjo "isn't a real banjo." If you're going to get THAT nitpicky, a modern five string resonator banjo isn't a "real banjo," either, because the original banjos were made from gourds, had cat or possum skins tacked on to serve as drum heads, and had no frets, much less bell bronze tone rings and Shubb fifth string capos mounted to the side of the neck:



In the long and infinitely varied history of banjo-family instruments, the Gibson Mastertone five string and its millions of copies are just one variant among MANY.

Forgive me if I seem just a little testy, but I've had more than one self-righteous bluegrasser who wouldn't know a classical ("elevated") banjo from an S.S. Stewart gut string from a Paramount plectrum from a pony banjo from a sarod presume to lecture me on what constitutes a "real" banjo, and I find it tedious in the extreme.

Briefly stated, much of the prejudice against 6 string guitar-banjos is due not only to the cheap and shoddy way so many of them have been built, but also because of some longtime, nagging problems with both tone and intonation.

But Greg Deering figured out how to fix that, basically by matching a thicker carved and intonated bridge with a good scale length that makes Deering guitar-banjos play and stay in tune all the way up the neck.

As for the musical merits of the guitar-banjo, sure, some people use them simply as an easy way to avoid learning to play a five string. That's to be expected, and is just as valid a use of the instrument as any other. But to dismiss the instrument entirely because of that is just as superficial and haughty as dismissing acoustic guitars entirely simply because some guys in their fifties with big beer guts hanging over their belts use their acoustic guitars only to play vapid old songs from their teens using nothing but first position chords.

The acoustic guitar has far more musical potential than simply strumming through a half-remembered version of "A Horse With No Name," and guitar-banjos have IMMENSELY more potential than simply serving as a crappy five string banjo substitute.

For one thing, it gives you lower voicings than are possible on five string. You've got a low A and a low E string that put the banjo tone in an entirely different register than five string.

It's a great instrument, and I would suggest that any of you who've bought into the current common wisdom that they're unsatisfying hybrid instruments should go make an effort to find a good one in a music store (preferably either a Deering or a Gold Tone,) and make that judgement based on actual hands-on experience.

Guitar-banjos are not going to be for everyone, not in this or any number of parallel universes. But if you've got a good sense of time the precise, clipped response of the guitar-banjo will make it better, and it's a far more useful and versatile instrument than many of you might think.

Hope this helps.


Wade Hampton Miller

[GerryinAZ]

The banjo in the pic above is quite modern,. The banjo originates in Africa and was nothing more than a gourd with a stick stuck in it and stripped bark strings.

Guitar-Banjo... Nah. Stick to playin' yer guitars.

6 stringed banjo played like a banjo is supposed to be played;

http://youtu.be/O-SLSZ-9748

You bet!

[Doubleneck]

Amen brother!! By the way Deering Goodtimes does not offer 6 string. I emailed them a couple of weeks ago and they said they are trying to get one but something in the neck makes it very tuff to do. No one is getting my B6 and my son sayings he is in line after me.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by GerryinAZ

The banjo in the pic above is quite modern,. The banjo originates in Africa and was nothing more than a gourd with a stick stuck in it and stripped bark strings.

I wasn't claiming that that was the only early version of the banjo, only that the modern industrialized society five string banjos that many bluegrass aficionados consider to be the only "real" banjos are nothing of the sort.

Originally Posted by GerryinAZ

Guitar-Banjo... Nah. Stick to playin' yer guitars.

You're welcome to your opinion, naturally, but the guitar-banjo is a valid instrument in its own right, quite useful for a number of applications.

Try playing surf music on one some time - it will blow your mind...

For some reason banjo family instruments bring out an almost reflexive prejudicial reaction in many people, guitarists not least among them. Which is too bad, but it's their loss.

I guess it's easier to think in terms of stereotypes than it is to actually explore the musical potential of these instruments.


whm