The old machine heads on my 1920's Windsor tenor banjo are fairly worn out and need repair or replacement. Can anyone suggest a good brand of machine heads that would fit into the banjo without any mucking around? I'd like to get tuners with gearing more suitable for the micro adjustment of the lower tension strings used with GDAE tuning.
Is there another website or forum that would be more useful for this request? PS: I live in Australia.
Without knowing the shaft diameter, I can't help you too much. A lot of the 20's banjos had friction tuners, and they often had very narrow shafts, and to replace those with geared tuners, you'd need to widen the holes. (BTW, do that with an auger, not a drill!)
The first thing to do is probably to take one of the old ones off, and measure the hole diameter (drill bits can be useful for that if they're not attached to a drill at the time ) Then you can talk about what parts to replace with. There are some companies that make shafts that specifically are made to replace some of the popular vintage ones.
You might also give a shout in the forums over at http://www.banjohangout.org/, they have a lot of knowledgeable people when it comes to banjo stuff!
you may need to plug and re-drill the peghead as friction peg holes are often so near the edge of the head as to leave the planetary gear casing standing proud of the edge.
Most planetaries have a reduction of about 4:1 and so don't really give you microtuning - guitar type tuners with worm gearing give about 16:1 and are much more accurate but wouldn't look at all right on an old banjo like yours.
Thanks for the suggestions, and I'll follow up the stewmac link. The banjo already has geared tuners which may not be original anyway.
I haven't found a detailed history of Windsor banjos on the web - is there a good source available online or in print to track down more info on my instrument?
New machine heads for old tenor banjo
New machine heads for old tenor banjo
The old machine heads on my 1920's Windsor tenor banjo are fairly worn out and need repair or replacement. Can anyone suggest a good brand of machine heads that would fit into the banjo without any mucking around? I'd like to get tuners with gearing more suitable for the micro adjustment of the lower tension strings used with GDAE tuning.
Is there another website or forum that would be more useful for this request? PS: I live in Australia.
thanks
# Posted on December 26th 2007 by dogbox
Re: New machine heads for old tenor banjo
Without knowing the shaft diameter, I can't help you too much. A lot of the 20's banjos had friction tuners, and they often had very narrow shafts, and to replace those with geared tuners, you'd need to widen the holes. (BTW, do that with an auger, not a drill!)
The first thing to do is probably to take one of the old ones off, and measure the hole diameter (drill bits can be useful for that if they're not attached to a drill at the time
) Then you can talk about what parts to replace with. There are some companies that make shafts that specifically are made to replace some of the popular vintage ones.
You might also give a shout in the forums over at http://www.banjohangout.org/, they have a lot of knowledgeable people when it comes to banjo stuff!
Pete
# Posted on December 26th 2007 by Reverend
Re: New machine heads for old tenor banjo
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tuners/Banjo_tuners.html
# Posted on December 26th 2007 by Backer
Re: New machine heads for old tenor banjo
you may need to plug and re-drill the peghead as friction peg holes are often so near the edge of the head as to leave the planetary gear casing standing proud of the edge.
Most planetaries have a reduction of about 4:1 and so don't really give you microtuning - guitar type tuners with worm gearing give about 16:1 and are much more accurate but wouldn't look at all right on an old banjo like yours.
Take a lot of care or you could spoil the thing.
# Posted on December 27th 2007 by millionyears_bc
Re: New machine heads for old tenor banjo
www.stewmac.com may have something, if not could lead to to something most likely to replace them.
# Posted on December 28th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: New machine heads for old tenor banjo
whoops.... sorry backer!! You said it first!!
they are very nice over there and willing to help.
# Posted on December 28th 2007 by irisnevins
Re: New machine heads for old tenor banjo
Thanks for the suggestions, and I'll follow up the stewmac link. The banjo already has geared tuners which may not be original anyway.
I haven't found a detailed history of Windsor banjos on the web - is there a good source available online or in print to track down more info on my instrument?
thanks, Ian
# Posted on January 3rd 2008 by dogbox