G'day all,

...Er, just to get back to banjos, I'm no expert (own two, but just fiddle about with them - Hey! Maybe that's what I've been doing wrong!) but I remember being told that the Plectrum banjo long predated the Tenor banjo and was designed for melody playing.

In order to facilitate this, they left off the drone string of the traditional 5 stringer ... and I have seen a few with a 5 string neck and a wooden plug in the hole where the 5th string peg would have been.

It is interesting that, in Australia, where we seem to have adopted the banjo after the 19th century minstrel shows toured the goldfields areas, there is little tradition (outside of the folk revival) of playing the drone string. In country areas you used to come across old players who played chord styles for dance music with what had started out as a 5 string banjo, but now had the 5th string - and often its peg - removed.

The Tenor banjo appeared later, in the jazz era, and was given a shorter neck with heavier, tighter strings, to get a sharp, loud sound that would cut through all those loud brass instruments.

Regards,

Bob Bolton