First built - Bass banjo!

[AngusF]

I'd like to present my very first build. Please be kind...

I'll add more photos later on if people are interested. I've always liked the idea of a bass banjo, but can't swallow the price tag to buy one.

I happen to have a number of salvaged necks in my shop, so I went looking for a moderately priced snare drum. I found a birch Pearl for a very good price the other day, and promptly began building my monstrosity.

The neck is mounted on a 4x4x4" block of laminated oak. Cutting the curve to mount it to the snare drum cost me my last bandsaw blade. I ended up finishing up the curve on my table saw, one tiny slice at a time.

The block is held to the body of the snare with the standard banjo arrangement of two tension rods, which I made from 3/8 threaded rod. The tailpiece was cut from a piece of scrap steel, and hammered into shape over various improvised forms. I managed to get it just a little off center, so I still have some work to do.

The bridge is a piece of ironwood that's been passed around from person to person, with each declaring it unworkably hard. My table saw didn't seem too bothered by it.

There's no pickup yet. I'm still not sure how I'm going to add one. I've heard that the Gold Tone banjo bass uses a magnetic pickup just under the drum head, but I think that'll put it too far from the strings to sound decent. I've got an inexpensive, no-name piezo pickup with an adhesive backing. Not surprisingly, it doesn't sound good at all, no matter where it's placed. I'd like to try a clamp-on upright bass piezo pickup, but I can't find one for a price I'm willing to pay.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

More pix please! Too cool!

 

[n4vgm]

Cool idea! If it were me I would think about using a floating jazz PU attached to the end of the fingerboard between the strings and the drumhead.

Good luck!

 

[Rôckhewer]

I would think you pretty much NEED to use a piezo...(or maybe a little condenser mic.)... to pick up the resonant sound of the drum head? A regular magnetic pickup is just going to amplify only the string vibration only...more or less sounding like a regular bass.

 

[Henrythe8]

Wondering how does this sound, even acoustically...

 

[AngusF]

It sounds fairly banjo-esque acoustically, but it's definitely still a bass. I'm still getting used to playing it, but I promise I'll post a video when I feel comfortable enough with the instrument. Balance is somewhat of an issue. I'm going to try adding strap buttons to take some strain off of my left arm.

I've been thinking about upright bass piezo pickups sandwiched between the bridge and the drum head. That would probably give a pretty accurate sound. I also like the idea of the floating J pickup, but I tend to agree that it may be all string and no drum.

I'll post some more photos this evening!

 

[neckdive]

A couple years ago, I inexplicably decided to build one of these also. I used an old closed back banjo body I bought off ebay and built a fretless neck I made from scratch out of Ipe. I used a small active piezo under the bridge and the unit and battery inside, which worked well despite having no volume control.

The photo shows the bridge using a piece of balsa. I tried several different type of wood. I also have short scale low tension TI strings on but didn't bother to cut the strings since I didn't know if this was going to be a permanent setup. The bridge and tailpiece was just somethingI fashioned to get it to work. I was planning on using Hofner violin style bridge and tailpiece eventually. This was merely a 'prototype' so I used whatever I had to get a proof of concept.

It sounds like a banjo with hardly any sustain. In the end, I really was not happy with the final results so the banjo now sits unused in the closet.

Playing it without a strap is awkward because of the neck-heaviness and the round body, so I used a removeable 8 inch curled bar that attached to the bottom of the body and rested on my leg.

It had trouble staying in tune because of the somewhat unstable connection to the body. The tension from bass strings is on a long neck is much higher than a stock neck with thin banjo strings and since the body is hollow, it presented a challenge to make the neck stable against the body.

I think I could probably improve on it quite a bit but I ended up losing interest and started building other stuff (like the fretless Jazz neck also shown).

 

[AngusF]

That's an interesting concept. I might have to do something similar, but with a short scale and rubber strings. I have to wonder about the balsa bridge being a factor in the poor sustain.

Now, this is interesting. Darren at Buzzard's Field Basses beat me to it. He just added this to his site. Invalid Link Removed - It looks like he put the piezo pickups under the skin, near the corner. I'll try that next.

 

[AngusF]

Here we go, as promised, some more pictures. It's not pretty yet, but it's definitely not finished. Note the wingnut used as a string guide on the headstock.


Edit: I decided to give the cheapie piezo another shot. Here it is under the skin. It works well enough, but has a massively bass-heavy output. I'd need to add a preamp with a proper EQ to gig with it.

 

[moonshinegtrs]

I've built a couple of these;

Sling Blade I:

& Sling Blade II which was featured in the Sept. 2015 Guitar World Magazine:

These were built using a metal oil drain pan instead of a drum shell or resonator, but the principles is the same.

On Sling Blade I, I used a magnetic pickup beneath the head and as previously mentioned, it wasn't overly loud even with a pre-amp. On Sling Blade II I used a Fishman Pre-amp that mounted in the side of the body. It uses both a under saddle piezo cable and a mic mounted inside the body. It works great; to be honest, the mic is overkill; it turns the bass into a feedback machine real quick. the under saddle piezo rocks though.


Sling Blade I was built as a novelty that could also be played. The second one was built to play; decently loud acoustically (it can hang with a couple of acoustic guitars... okay, barely ), but plugged in it has a tone that sounds like a resonator (dobro) bass. this is most likely due to the metal body.


Banjo basses are cool. what's even more cool is seeing everyone's interpretation of one. There are some pretty inventive designs out there. The very first (modern) banjo bass I ever saw was Bruce Johnson's Banjozilla on the last page of Bass Player Magazine... It ruined me forever.


Excellent design AngusF!




Moonshine

 

[sissy kathy]

I like the wing nut string retainer, that' so neat.

 

[Martin Beer]

I've heard magnetic guitar pickups being used on a tenor banjo and they still retain a lot of the banjo sound (or at least it didn't sound at all like an electric guitar). I presume the quick decay and short sustain of a banjo comes from the head dispersing the energy from the strings in one quick burst, so the string vibration doesn't sustain for as long as on a solidbody instrument.

 

[Keith Guitars]

A popular trick with banjo players is to stick a small metal shim (i.e. a piece of razor blade, or even better, a bit of flexible steel) to the underside of the banjo head. You can then use a magnetic pickup to amplify the vibrations of the head. The new EMG banjo system is based on this approach. Properly positioned, it can result in a pretty realistic sound with lots of banjo character.

Looks nice!
Cheers,
Martin

 

[moonshinegtrs]

A popular trick with banjo players is to stick a small metal shim (i.e. a piece of razor blade, or even better, a bit of flexible steel) to the underside of the banjo head. You can then use a magnetic pickup to amplify the vibrations of the head. The new EMG banjo system is based on this approach. Properly positioned, it can result in a pretty realistic sound with lots of banjo character.

Looks nice!
Cheers,
Martin

The late Gene Wooten, who at one time was Nashville's top Dobro tech/repairman (as well as a hell of a dobro player) told me about this; the trick was to put a portion of a razor blade under one of the feet of the bridge (between the banjo head & the bridge), then mount a magnetic pickup inside the rim on the tension rods.

While working with Gene in 2001 I used this set up on the very first resonator bass I built; I installed a EMG SA pickup in the standard neck position and I placed a EMG HB pickup inside the body under the resonator cone along with a short piece of a bass string attached to the bottom of the resonator cone. The pickup inside the body picked up the vibrations from the cone and gave the bass a very resonant "upright" bass tone; it was not perfect (it was prone to feedback), but it was a very cool sound. It was made entirely out of walnut with pearl bass clef inlays on the peghead face & the heel cap. It also had "Tennessee" engraved on a pearl banner on the peghead face. I'm describing it because it was stolen later that year and I have never seen it since. I would love to find out what happened to it. I need to try this out again; it would sound killer on a fretless resonator bass.

I did show the bass to the guys at the EMG booth at summer NAMM. They liked it, but I doubt it had any impact on anything they do. Bryan Beller played it at the SWR booth (I believe he was a rep for them back then), he quickly drew a crowd, but I'm sure Bryan draws a crowd wherever he plays.



Moonshine

 

[AngusF]

Wow, some fantastic knowledge being passed around in this thread. I was out of town over the weekend, but now I've got a bunch of things to try out on this bass. Thanks everyone!