Steve its an open back - though you might not believe me when I tell you it will never ever need a resonator it is nearly as loud as my Martin .. the missus says the DM sounds like an electric guitar!

Hi Ray thanks for the tip, I know it works as I already tried it. However I think it can be made to sound like several other fine Banjos I have seen played eg Reiter, Omes and so on, since the hoop etc looks so similar.

BigChuck it has so large and solid a hoop it weighs in like a sack of flour! No problem there - I seem to be great at finding either exceptionaly good examples of instruments or incredibly good lemons, to understand this remark you would have to see my old Chromatic Harmonica collection.

Guest you are so right about that. I swapped it for a fiddle when I had two of them. I don't need fiddles since I am a Guitaraholic in therapy with Colonel C F Martin.

After indepth analysis it appears that higher bridges make louder banjos - no idea why - but it looks like mine being way too high, a new lower bridge may help ... a lot.

There is a screw in back for adjusting neck angle and that works - but it cannot fix the brige problem only make it less of problem.