The reason the fifth string peg is where it is is because it was a standard banjo that was operated on to add the extra three frets, in the first "Pete Seeger" banjo, built for Pete some long time ago (my memory says 1946-48, but what does it know?). The neck was cut through at the peghead end and more wood added, with a fingerboard extension added, too. There used to be a diagram of the conversion in the earlier editions of Pete's banjo book. I don't think it's still in the later ones.

I knew a guy once who insisted that the long-neck banjo was the original banjo, an opinion he based on learning that the old "standard" for tuning was A, not C. He held this opinion despite pictures, catalogs, and actual instruments -- none with the extended neck -- which far predated the change in the standard, which itself took place in 1895-96 (again, relying on my alleged memory). He relied on the evidence of tuning, which in turn relied on the tensile strength of gut strings.

When I had a long-neck banjo, I tuned the fifth string (as needed) from E to about A before resorting to the fifth-string capo (never could get those railroad spikes to work right, so I use the sliding gizmo).

Bob Clayton