Kindly permit me a final word on zither banjos. I come from a long line of zither banjo players going right back to Alfred Glanville Vance aka 'The Great Vance' (1839-1888) one of the greatest Music Hall performers of his day. I have owned all kinds of zither banjos, Temletts (Senior and Junior), Windsors, and John Alvey Turners, and loved them all my life for the past 80 years or so.

Firstly I must disagree with GUEST Banjo Ray and his claim that '4 string tailpieces are a common disease of all sorts of old five string banjos'. 5-string banjos, do not have 4 strings, obviously, and they were never made that way. If they have a 4-string tail piece it's because they've been modified probably during the Trad Jazz era (although why anyone should do this instead of buying a tenor banjo with 4 strings I can't imagine. 5-string tailpieces for zither banjos are, surprisingly enough, quite easy to get hold of, but you may need a new nut and bridge.

Secondly, it's time to nail once and for all, the myth about Cammeyer inventing the zither banjo. The term was in use long before he came on the scene, and Temlett Snr. patented his 7-string zither banjo in 1869 using the term 'zither' for that type of banjo, and even he never claimed to have invented the term. My guess, and it's a reasonably informed one, is that around that time zithers rivaled banjos in popularity, and because of its softer tone this new type of banjo came to be called the 'zither' banjo.   

Incidentally, the way you can easily distinguish a zither banjo from any other banjo including closed-back banjos such as the Dobson, is that in the standard 5-string banjo, the neck is directly fitted to the head. In the zither banjo the neck is affixed to the wooden 'bowl' upon which the head 'floats' via a number of brackets attached to the head. Simples, yeah?

Why the 6 tuning pegs? This is a common feature of most zither banjos. Let me say most emphatically, this was NOT, repeat Not, so that they could be strung like a guitar. To do this you would have to replace tailpiece, nut and bridge, and totally defeat the object of playing something called a banjo. The 5-string banjo derives from an African instrument in which an odd string acts as a drone and that's why there are 5 or 7 strings. 6, never! The 6 tuners on most zither banjos is simply due to the fact that why make special 5-string tuners when there are plenty of guitar tuners going spare? You will however, see zither banjos with 5 pegs. These were made in nickel-silver, and naturally added to the cost.

Cammeyer was a bit of a romanticist and claimed to have made his first zither banjo using an old chair back. That's as may be. I certainly owned one like that. I it had the 5 nickei-silver tuners, but I don't think it was Cammeyer's!

Another possible reason for the zither banjos popularity may have been that the smog-laden atmosphere of Victorian London played havoc with the vellum on American open-backed banjos, and so it was thought not very scientifically. that a closed wooden back would mean less vellum exposed to the air and reduce the tendency of the banjo to go out of tune as you were playing.

Enough! I've probaly driven you all to distraction with boredom.