I know banjo players who love them. I know banjo players who hate them. But that would be true of any banjo you could name.

Also, banjo players as a group are rather sharply divided into a number of different camps over what a banjo should sound like. Be careful to distinguish comments about the quality of constrution and fit and finish from comments about its sound. Where one player hears plunky perfection, another hears a dull thud.

With banjos, a lot of it is about the player, not the instrument. Some of the old time banjo legends played instruments that you would toss into a dumpster.