Not a very popular group but hopefully a few interestedparties will join. I am new to mandolin and initially bought a vintage mandolin banjo which came with an interesting provenance - a now very eldely lady had played it in the 60s as part of a travelling folk group that used to tour the UK mainland and Ireland. The case has wonderful stickers on it from yesteryear and the drum was signed and a message left on it. It was obviusly well cared for and played a lot. It was sold as a "banjolin" which it is not and I discovered it was a mandolin in banjo form - the strings seem fine but I guess it could do with a going over by a professional luthier, hard to find one in the UK who wuld be remotely interested! So Iam just setting out on my mandolin journey with arrival of anEastman 615 anticipated later this week, i have a cheapie F style at present, and a little herd of ukuleles and three guitars..........plus my mandolin banjo which dates from around the 30s sometime, a British made one called "Savana". (Not to be confused with Savannah modern mandolins!).
Yeah, probably as popular as the mandolin banjo. I started the group kind of hoping it would attract some players with knowledge who could help us newbies, but it hasn't done so. Maybe my novel-length first posting is at fault. I thought mandolin banjos were a lot more popular in Britain and Ireland than in the US. Maybe more of you will sign up and we will have some company. It sounds like you've got a great instrument with a lot of character. I'm not sure about yours, but about the only things mine have in common with the mandolin are the four double-course strings with additional tuners and the scale length. It has a lot more in common with the banjo. It seems like a luthier specializing in banjos would be willing to go over yours. But I don't know if the banjo is popular enough over there to support such a specialist. If you can't find one, then one specializing in folk instruments might be able to do it, though you'd want to interview them first. Surely someone must work on the banjo-variant instruments used by those Celtic bands that I see in the Youtube videos!
There is someone down south in the UK who specialises in banjo ukes, bnajo mandolins etc - www.andybanjo.com. A long way from where I live, but I guess I could send it, and the little banjo uke I picked up inexpensively, to him to set up for me via a courier service. The banjo mandolins and banjo ukes were very popular in the UK in the 20s and 30s and were churned out in large quantities by a number of UK manufacturers. Both mine are UK made of that vintage and are definitely more banjo than uke or mandolin. Many banjo mandolins were "converted" to 4 strings ukes later as people didn't like the 8 steel strings which were quite difficult to source and even harder to tune or play! Will get a few pics of mine and post up here - hey, even if its just the two of us having a chat here and there, we may get some more interest sometime! Lots of cafe people are very "instrument snob" orientated - if your mandolin isn't a mandolin (ie banjo mandolin)or cost less than thousands of dollars, you seem to be sneered at somewhat! Never mind! We can take it!
That Banjo Andy seems like a good guy and like a good place to take or send your instrument. He doesn't seem too far outside of London. Where are you, anyway? (I admit that, being from the west coast of the US, nothing in England seems very far from anywhere else.) On the other hand, unless you have a particular complaint with it, maybe you should restring it and play it for a while first. That might save you one trip or even more. As for being sneered at, what mandolin OR banjo player isn't used to that no matter what the price of their instrument? We're right up there with the bagpipes! (Which I also like, but do not play.) What really counts is how well you play it. I don't play anything well, but I try and am getting better. Beats dying without trying.
Hello Fatbear, anything beats dying without trying! I guess those of us who like banjo mandolins are oddballs, funny that you like the pipes as well - I do too, but have never tried, although did consider buying a chanter to get a feel of it! Andybanjo is a long way from where I live in UK terms, he is quite far down South, I am several hundred miles away up central / north so visiting wouldn't be an option at this stage. I am going to just try tuning it up and playing a bit - I received my first decent mandolin yesterday, an Eastman 615, so just busy getting to grips with it at the moment before I feel confident about banjo mandolins! What a shame more people are not interested in these!
One of the most played albums (yep, albums as in 33 RPM vinyl going round and round and round) as I was growing up was The Royal Scots Dragoon band's Amazing Grace one. I love all kinds of music but this is still one of my favorite albums. When I went to my first mandolin lesson my instructor was trying to get a feel for what I like and what I had been trying to learn on my own. One of my songs was Amazing Grace, another was Going Home. I told him how much I liked the bagpipes and so the first thing he actually taught me was how to play Going Home with drone chords. It's still one of my nightly songs. But on my Big Muddy mandolin, not on the banjo mandolin. I must say, though, that as a former saxophone player, I have no desire to play a wind instrument. All those holes to cover and all that blowing and blowing and people plugging their ears and telling you to go practice somewhere else - like the Yukon Territories or something. Stringed instruments are somewhat easier to understand and have so many more little nuances you can add. It seems like there is more room to personalize your playing. Though mine mostly still sounds like a third year beginner.
Hi guys! I just joined this group because I've been eyeing up a couple of Mandolin Banjos. There's one on a nearby craigslist for $275 that looks like it's in great condition, and one at the classifieds here. There's a 20's Vega on Ebay right now with the bids around $112, 'with the "reserve not met" tag on it. I wonder how much they want for it. I don't think I'll buy any of them, but I'd love to have one. Maybe I'll make one?
I looked for that one on eBay but don't think I see the one you are talking about. Mine, the one pictured on the group's home page, is a @1925 Vega. It is unusual in that it is a resonator model. It was a seriously played professional instrument for many years, so it shows both wear and care. One thing I have since learned about these is that there were three "styles". The K style was the low end of the line. The S and L styles were higher, but I don't remember which was the better of those two. (I'm not in the market, so don't retain stuff like that in my small and crowded brain.) The K is said not to have a tone ring, the L and S do. I think mine might be based on the K but it does have a very simple metal tone ring, so I don't know what to think of it. If you are looking for an instrument to play, these older ones can be very nice, but might take work to get them in shape. I would look very carefully at the fretboard. I think re-fretting it sounds expensive. The tuner knobs will soon disintegrate. They are made of some sort of very early plastic which loses its plasticizers and gets brittle. My tuners were also very tight and one of them had a tight spot that I could not fix. I tried oil and grease and finally took the tuner off and chucked the knob shaft into my drill (the knob had broken because the tuner was so tight.) I used valve lapping compound and tried to gently lap the tuner back into shape. It didn't work so I replaced the tuners. That turned out to be tricky. Apparently mandolin tuner spacing was "standardized" in 1925. Before that every supplier had their own spacing. StewMac sells tuners with vintage Gibson spacing, but nobody makes pre-1925 Vega spaced mandolin tuners. You can imagine that there just isn't much market for them. I had to change the hole spacing on my peghead which was tricky and made the instrument non-original. Not that I care - I can play it now. And this thing is loud. If you play mandolin and want an instrument which can be heard without amplification and while standing 5 feet from a jet airplane engine, this is your baby. I don't normally want to play that loud so I find that I don't play it as often as I thought I would. Back to prices. I am not a mandolin banjo expert, but I do notice such things in passing. If the Vega is in good shape and is an L or S it is probably worth over $500. I think I saw one of the real high end ones sell for something like $800. You can easily research selling prices on eBay by filtering for sold items when you do your search. That's what I would recommend. As for making one, first I would ask two things: Have you played one? And have you made other instruments before? I am a do-it-yourselfer and when I'm done with my current multi-year remodeling project I hope to find the time to build an instrument. But I'm not sure I would want to spend all of the time and money it takes to build my first instrument if I wasn't sure I would like to play it. Of course if you've already built other instruments, you probably have the tools and knowledge you need.
Thanks for the info! The one I was talking about ended, and has been relisted here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/151266799601...9#ht_291wt_922 It's a K style. As far as building, I am just starting on my first F5 scratch build. During the last couple of months, I've been tooling up, and just got my first set of wood. This will definately be a learning experience for me, but if all goes well, I don't see why a Mandolin Banjo shouldn't be my next project. One thing at a time, though.
Looks nice enough to me. You can never tell from pictures, but the condition appears good. I just don't know what things are worth. Use the Show Only Sold Listings checkbox in an eBay search and see what others have sold for. Here's an example: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_saca...H_Sold=1&rt=nc Being tooled up for building and F5 would probably put you in a very good position to build a banjo. I think most of the tricky work looks like it would be in the neck. In fact, you can buy the banjo "pots", tone rings, and the various hardware that goes on them off-the-shelf and then the neck would be most of the project. But then that wouldn't be a vintage mandolin banjo so we would have to start a new thread here in the group for it.
Just joined because I recently purchased a Gibson Jr mandolin banjo on eBay. Despite what others on Mandolin Cafe might say about these critters, I really like mine. I also have Gibson mando. I don't think of one as being better than the other. They are simply different. I've taken part in local jam sessions with my 5-string banjo. The mandos cannot be heard for all the guitars. Junior should be different. :-) I'm returning to strings after many years (played violin as a kid, then nothing for many years, then started sax at age 67 - now playing in 3 community bands). I've been taking 5-string banjo lessons for the past 2 years and have just started mando. The mando instruments (I also have an octave mando and a tenor banjo tuned as an octave mando) give me a wide range of music and instrument groupings to play (once I learn to play). The beauty of it is they are all tuned the same way - the way I learned as a kid. Yippee!!!
Yup, Junior should be heard all right.
