Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Hey Kids! Be Your Own Luthier!

#1

Today was string-changing day, and while I was at it I thought I’d adjust the head tension and polish up the shiny parts on my banjo. As I was doing it, I started thinking about the guy from whom I bought my banjo. Great guy, outstanding luthier and now getting up there in years. A recent eye surgery also limits what he can do and he has officially retired from the business.
As I broke into a cold sweat I realized there is no one within a drive of several hours that I would trust with my banjo. Will I have to be my own luthier if something goes wrong? I can change strings & tighten the head, but I’m not too sure about tinkering with the coordinating rods or the truss rod.

Have you become your own luthier?
Is it simply a matter of having the confidence to tinker, or did you screw up big time and learn a lot from the school of hard knocks?

I doubt I will ever do a fret replacement myself or repair a cracked headstock.
Where does “routine maintenance” end and “hire an expert” begin?

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#2

No guts no glory as they say…:roll_eyes:

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#3

“Only gamble what you can afford to lose.” :grimacing:

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#4

I work on and set up all of my instruments. The only thing I don’t do is some of the major woodworking, and I’m not very experienced with refrets.

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#5

I’ve never really done anything more involved on banjos than adjusting coordinator rods, tightening heads, etc. The most I’d ever trust myself to do would probably be changing the head or lowering the nut, definitely wouldn’t do a refret or something like that myself.

The neat thing about banjos’ compositions is they’re very modular; there’s a bunch of little less fragile metal components, whereas a guitar is mostly wood.
(I, on the other hand, am mostly flesh and bone, and if he can’t go to heaven well I guess I’ll go alone son.)

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#6

I considered myself a luthier since I put Christmas lights inside my banjo head for the Christmas Eve service. :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

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#7

Brilliant! :+1:

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#8

OK, so any horror stories that involve the word “Oops?”

There’s something to be said about “learning from other people’s mistakes!” :wink:

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#9

Of course. The most recent was when I was working on one of those Martin guitar kits. I bought a binding router for my Dremel and started routing out the channel. The bit managed to make itself deeper as I was routing and messed up the channel. I had to take it to a luthier to repair… The only thing I’ll do for someone else is set up a Dobro or banjo- I won’t attempt any “repairs” on someone else’s instruments.

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#10

Anything that involves both glue & me is a horror story!

That goes for anything to do with flour in the kitchen as well :roll_eyes:

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#11

Don’t get me started on flour! I am a very good cook, but a lousy baker. (That’s my wife’s area.*) I hate the feel of flour & I hate how it gets all over everything and that’s just the beginning.

  • She makes the best biscuits in America!
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#12

“Horror stories”: So I was a teenager and I wanted a fretless bass. I didn’t have money for one, but I had two basses and diagonal cutters… what could go wrong? Awful, terrible tearout from the fret removal, that is what. Horror! The ragged holes were filled and sanded and the horror was averted.
I was trying to get my plug-in guitar action as low as I could without it getting buzzy. I took one or two swipes too many with a nut file. You can’t unswipe. Horror! I filled with bone dust and CA glue and refiled. Horror removed.
Same guitar as the last one, I decided I didn’t like the string edge clearance so I would fabricate a new nut. The slots “wandered” as I deepened them, so they were just wonky. I threw away the new project nut, grabbed a new blank and learned a different technique. Horror corrected.

Things I learned:

  1. Heat (via a soldering iron) helps prevent tearout when removing frets. Some frets are glued and this helps break the grip of glue.
  2. Nut clearances are tough to get perfect, but if you do get it too low, you CAN fix it.
  3. Now I don’t use a layout gauge for fabricating nuts. I set my desired edge clearance, put baby notches for the outside strings and tweak until they are right. Then measure the free space between them. Calculate the space between strings accounting for the string widths themselves (you can choose consistent gaps or consistent center to center spacing). Lay it out, make some baby indents and measure. Then you can start lowering the slots about 5 swipes at a time and measuring as you go to push or pull the slots as needed. It sounds like it would take longer, but doing one and nailing it is much quicker that having to discard one and grab a new blank.
  4. I agree with what someone said above… know your limits of what you are comfortable doing. There is nothing wrong with paying for someone else’s expertise.
  5. As you do more, you will likely find that (within reason) there isn’t much that can’t be fixed. Learn on lesser instruments. Then go for it!
  6. I also agree with the comment about working on other peoples instruments. I am much more conservative in what I will do to other folks instruments unless I know them 100% (like my mother law, wife, and some close friends).

This concludes my novel. I’d like to thank my cat Shelly who tirelessly sat on my lap and arms, helping me concentrate and type.

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#13

And my current one…
I wanted a looser sound on my banjo (a new beast to me) so I dropped my head tension from 91 down to 87… back up to 89 based on my ear. Then I changed to a different string set to try them out. Went from mediums to lights. Then my banjo sounded like a noodle. It was loosey-goosey and the intonation seemed way off ((it was just sour sounding). I go back to re-tighten the head, and it settled in far different than what I measured. The lugs ranged from 88 to 90. Some were seemingly finger tight (and that wasn’t the way it was when I closed it up)

Lessons learned: When trying something new, make one change and play it a while to make sure you get a good feel for it. I also learned that when making changes to head tension, it seems you have to let it settle a bit and re-check. I also also learned that string gauge and head tensions both affect how tight it plays… change one at a time unless until you know more about it than I do/did.

If anyone else has experience to shed light on this, please share so that I can learn quicker :slight_smile:

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#14

Wouldn’t you know it, I just tightened my head yesterday. (“Tightened your head?” My wife thought this was funny.)
When I was finished, the 1st string created a truly weird harmonic buzz. I could actually hear it swirl around the pot. Just seconds before panic set in it dawned on me that maybe a few nuts were a bit loose. Sure enough. Tighten the couple 88’s to 90 and the banjo sounded great.

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#15

@BanJoe @Mike_R are you measuring the pounds using DrumDials? Or is there some other way of measuring the head tension numerically?

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#16

The drum dial is my favorite way. You can do it by ear too (listen to the pitch.) I imagine you probably already knew that :laughing:

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#17

Yeah I do the tap tuning method since I’m too cheap to buy a Drumdial :joy: The main advantage that I see to the dial is that it gives you a numerical measurement for each spot, I didn’t know if that was only possible with the dial or if Mike and Joe were using some other tool.

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#18

I am using the drum dial. It seems to measure deflection. I am guessing it is in thousandths of an inch.

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#19

Interesting… very similar! I am guessing that dropping a head’s tension is more problematic than tightening for the loosening/settling that is happening.

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#20

I’m also using theDrum Dial since my ear isn’t quite up to the task yet. I have no idea what the DD actually measures. Could be the number of angels that can dance on the head of a banjo, for all I know. It appears the answer is about 90.

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