When I bought my old open back S.S.Stewart tenor, it had the original skin head and no tone ring. I have since added a simple 1/4" brass tube tone ring (I had to saw of 1/4" from the top of the pot) and changed to a thin mylar head. These two modifications increased the volume significantly. When I played in sessions, I changed from a GDAE tuning to a DAEB tuning. This puts all the tunes I played in the GDAE tuning an octave higher and since few of the fiddle tunes I was playing ever went below the D string, it didn't restrict me much. If I did need the low G, I could either modify the tune, go up an octave or switch to mandolin for that tune. This tuning seemed to increase the volume of the banjo as well.