The Wildwood Troubador Openback 5-String Banjo is the flagship model for the Wildwood Frailing and Clawhammer traditional banjo line. Clawhammer and Frailing are traditional banjo styles making a significant comeback. Not only are players exploring older traditional and historic repertoire, but new modern music is being created regularly outside of the old-time and bluegrass contexts. The banjo can work extremely well with a voice an an expressive device.
Banjos
Here we’re looking at a wonderfully preserved Gibson RB-18 Mastertone ‘Top Tension’ 5-string banjo, with its gold plating unworn and the finish lightly checked from age. From the serial number, it appears to have been produced during June of 1996. The number breaks down as ‘RB’ for Regular Banjo – i.e. 5-string – ’18’ for the style, followed by two digits for the year (96) and two for the month (06). The last group of digits, a single number 7 in this case, is the production number for that model in that date period.
The Wildwood Heirloom traditional open-back banjo is handmade by master luthier Mark Platin in Bend, Oregon, and features a Tubaphone style tone ring and engraved vintage theme inlays. The Wildwood Heirloom pot is built around Wildwood’s turned rock-maple block rim, fitted with a brass Tubaphone replica tone ring and Waverly tailpiece. This banjo also has the historic Vega banjo ‘bracket band’ upgrade.
This instrument has sold
MORE →This is a very nice Bacon Professional FF Special 5-string open back banjo, built for Fredrick J Bacon of Forest Dale, Vermont, around 1914 by the Vega company. Fred Bacon was a very well known professional banjo player who achieved the ultimate in his time’s mass media exposure – recording for Thomas Edison’s Phonograph Company. The Bacon Banjo Company was formed by Bacon and his wife at their home in Forest Dale, VT in 1906. The banjos were actually built to order by various companies, but primarily by Vega. In 1914, the celluloid Bacon label seen in one of the rear views here appeared in the company catalog. The Bacon Professional FF Special was produced around 1914.
As an example of form following function, the long neck banjo was a Pete Seeger creation designed to extend available keys using just a capo. Placing the capo at the third fret, the long neck functions as a ‘normal’ 5-string banjo in G, but without the capo it drops down to E.
This instrument has sold
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