Wilco, my man, you are laboring under a false assumption. The lure of the banjo is not in the playing. It's in the tuning! Anybody can play a banjo! Nobody has ever been able to successfully tune a banjo! No matter how often you change strings, no matter what kind of bridge you use, no matter whether you have a $100 Dixon or a $4,000 Stelling, YOU CAN'T TUNE A BANJO!!!!

Gettiing the open strings in tune is not the problem. It's when you start mashing em' down onto those fret things that it becomes apparent that your "in-tune" banjo is far from it. It has been said that if anyone ever did manage to get a G-tuned banjo to play all possible G chord voicings in perfect tune, he will have reached banjo Nirvana and the desire to play will leave him. As far as I know, nobody has yet accomplished this feat.

Bruce