John Croft, Glan Tanat, Llanyblodwel, Oswestry, Shropshire, SY10 8NQ, England. Tel: (44) 01691 - 828850.
E-Mail: theukuleleman@hotmail.com

ALL ABOUT BANJO-UKES.

(These are extracts from an article that I wrote some years ago)

Essentially, Banjo-Ukes are made of three sections; the Neck, the Hoop (or Pot) and the Resonator. All Banjo-Ukes have a Neck and a Hoop, but not all have a Resonator. The Neck has three main parts; the Peghead, the Fingerboard, and the Heel. Some Necks have a Perch Pole (or Truss Rod) attached to them to help secure them to the Hoop. Pegheads come in a variety of thicknesses and shapes, but they are all angled downwards in relation to the Fingerboard. This is to enable pressure to be applied to the strings at the point at which they cross the Nut. The Nut is the small object which marks the boundary between the Peghead and the Fingerboard. It can be made of wood, plastic, or bone, and it designates the start of the Fingerboard on which we play the chords. The area between the Nut and the Bridge of the instrument is the area in which the strings vibrate, so some pressure from the strings on the Nut (and the Bridge) is always desirable to prevent the strings vibrating in areas they are not supposed to. The distance from the Nut to the twelfth fret should give you an octave, and it should be exactly the same distance again from the twelfth fret to the Bridge.

The main feature of the Peghead are the Pegs. Originally there were Friction Pegs. These Pegs were wooden and were simply pushed through the holes in the Peghead. They were a real pain! They often took a lot of pressure to turn, they didn’t turn easily or smoothly, and they frequently broke when you tried to turn them because of the friction between the wooden Peg and the side of the hole. A huge advance came with the introduction of metal Friction Pegs, which despite their name were much easier to use, although some designs were much better than others. Finally came the Geared Pegs which were far superior, allowing finer tuning and preventing the Pegs from slipping. Two famous brands of Geared Pegs were ‘Planet’ and ‘Page’, but geared pegs tended only to be put upon the more expensive instruments. The only other real feature of the Peghead was that it was there that the manufacturers (and sometimes the retailers) frequently put their name, perhaps with the model name and/or the serial number of the instrument. Serial numbers tended to appear on the back of the Peghead rather than on the front.

The Neck is fairly straightforward. The main function of the Neck is to allow you to play chords on the Fingerboard using combinations of different fingers on different strings and on different Fret positions. The Frets are the metal bars which run across the fingerboard at diminishing intervals from the Nut. Most Banjo-Ukes have between 15 and 18 frets. Fingerboards need to be completely flat and very durable, and they are usually made of Ebony, Rosewood, or occasionally ‘Pyralin’ — an early form of plastic. Cheaper instruments frequently have ‘ebonised’ fingerboards which was simply black staining on cheap wood to simulate an ebony-like finish. Most fingerboards have Position Dots marked on them for help with chord finding. More expensive instruments tended to have fingerboards with fancy inlay designs in mother-of pearl instead of just dots. Higher grade instruments also often had a line of Cream or White Binding (Purfling, or Edging) along each side of the fingerboard to enhance its appearance.

Where the Neck joins the Hoop, it deepens out to form the Heel, from where the Neck is joined on to the Hoop. This join is critical, because it must keep the neck rigid at all times, but methods of attachment were many and various. Cheaper instruments (and some higher grade ones like the English ‘Abbott’s) had the neck attached to the Hoop with two or three large threaded screws which were inserted through the holes in the Hoop and then screwed into the end of the Neck to fasten it on. Other instruments have a Perch Pole (Truss Rod) mechanism. The Perch Pole is usually a piece of wood (square or round in section) that is integral with, and extends from, the Neck. The Perch Pole is usually pushed through a hole in the side of the Hoop and attached to the opposite side of the Hoop by means of a screw. A metal bracket usually sits on the Perch Pole and clasps the neck tightly to the Hoop. Most Gibson Banjo-Ukes have a Perch Pole made of metal, which at one end threads onto the lower of two screws protruding from the Neck, and at the opposite end passes through the Hoop where it is secured by a hexagonal nut. A cheap way to fix the Perch Pole was to cut a slot in it and insert a flat piece of wood to secure the Neck to the Hoop. NEXT