The banjar - Advice? Comments? Questions?

[Eric Banjitar]

My banjitar is still my primary instrument, however I have a new idea, a banjar.

Here's the plan: Start with a inexpensive tele neck.  Cut away about a 1/4" of the neck perpendicular to the fretboard (making the neck skinnier and flat on one edge).  The flat edge will allow me to glue an extension onto the side of the neck from the heel to the 5th fret. This extesion will be for the 7th drone string. I will then build a body modeled after a tele and route for the banjo head. I will next modify a banjitar tailpiece to hold a seventh string. The banjar will have two pickups a loller 7 string single coil and a schatten BJ02 transducer pickup.  Both pickups will run down through a stereo 1/4" phone jack to a splitter and then to two amps, one electric and one acoustic.

Because this is such a crazy and unique idea, the first one I build will be done as inexpensive as possible.  If the prototype works as I expect to, then we go top-shelf on the wood choices and build a really fancy one.

My banjo friend say "go for it", my guitar friends are mixed, no one cares what drummers think.  What do you think? Any advice, suggestions, comments, questions or donations are appreciated!

 

[Eric Banjitar]

To save money, I have decided to sacrifice an 80's "Series 10" electric.  I never play it anyway. The neck of this guitar will be used to make the new banjar.  The body is a painted, veneered plywood. All of electronics and hardware will be kept for other projects. Updates to follow.

 

[stubhead]

It seems to me that the purpose of a drone string might be greater for a solo artist, and lesser for a band artist. But I know absolutely nothing about playing banjos, except that people who put in a few good years develop immense fingerpicking skills on everything else.

 

[Eric Banjitar]

Stubhead- agreed the drone and alternating bass-line fingerpicking is normally a solo or bluegrassy thing. However, the drone string will, hopefully, be used while playing with my band.  We do a bunch of Grateful Dead, Dylan, jam band and alt country tunes.  I fingerpick my banjitar as a rhythm player, a fast twangy banjo kind-of sound. I also play solo sometimes, but i find it really hard to fingerpick and sing at the same time (I run out of brain). 

It is possible to get a drone-string on a normal guitar also. I have been playing like this: To create a drone string on your guitar, play in the key of E (Emajor, root position chord). Use the high e as the drone fingerpick a pattern and bounce down to the high e string like a bass line.  Then move to the 5th fret and barre the A chord leaving the e string open. continue to treat it like a bass line. Back to E, then B open e, A open e and back to the root position E chord. This sounds really cool to me, but is a pain to do. My solution:

The banjar will have a high-pitched drone string that will be either tuned to, or capoed to, the key of the song. Open it will be a high e. I can then drop tune it to d or tune it up and use a 5th string banjo capo (pictured below) to get the drone string in key. I think that I can order an 8" 5th string banjo capo from Shubb which should get me all the way from the 5th fret (start of drone string) to the 15th fret (a full step from the octive).

My goal is to get that off-beat, key re-inforcing drone sound found in a lot of bluegrass. I would be able to play it as a guitar, or as a larger range, drone string banjo.

I still dont know what type of string I will use for the drone or how exactly I will modify the neck of the donor to become a 7 string.  I think that I will purchase the capo and the drone string tuner and see how it goes.  I will need to fabricate or seriously modify the tailpiece, build the body, purchase the banjo parts and electronics and then assemble. EASY!?!? :dontknow:> :toothy10:

 

[stubhead]

When I got a pedal steel I got a single 10-string neck in the C6th tuning, because I just can't get my head around strings that are "out-of-order" - the classic country tuning is the E9th,  and the top two strings are lower than the 3rd and 4th string. Thousands of people play it that way, and can play a surprisingly wide variety of musical stuff, but out of order strings just seem gimmicky to me somehow - lick-driven rather than music-driven evolvement, maybe. But as they say, play the music, not the tuning. Freddy Roulette plays with a deranged A7 tuning :
  G      A        A    C#    E        A      C#    E  low to high, gauges:
.034, .052, .052, .038, .034, .020, .016, .012
so there's a double unison A and that G "belongs" in the middle somewhere. Too bad he can only play like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX06XkUhkbs

I've spent some time fiddling with open tunings, but ultimately I like to know where I am on the damn thing. And people like Bela Flecke, Chris Thile, David Lindley go on to prove that they're just really, really smart & hard-working, at the very least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSZ40V0teGM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYgllgF7lc&feature=related

I mean, foo. :blob7:

 

[Eric Banjitar]

Follow the link below to see and hear what the banjitar I made sounds like acoustic while using the high e as a drone note in the key of E (E-A-B Deep Elem kinda progression)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7keWDanDxw