Plante Tenor Banjo

My 46th commissioned instrument and the first banjo I ever built from scratch. Working in this field, you get lots of chances to assemble banjo pieces for customers (they are, in a sense, modular folk instruments) but when the opportunity arises to create a cohesive piece of art in banjo form, well I at least jumped at it.

Of course, there are many pieces of hardware that are mostly produced by specialized companies. For this project we wanted it to look old, so I sourced vintage pieces where possible, and put others through a chemical aging process. The finish itself is nitrocellulose over flamed maple and gently sunburst with darker lacquer.

These 5 Star tuners were the customer's choice and I found them to work wonderfully. This is a low gear ratio planetary tuner, so named for the rotation of the gear work around the center shaft. They are an improvement on the friction tuners of yesteryear, which rely on the geometry of the headstock material to hold tune. Ha.

The tailpiece is some new machine work by the Pisgah banjo company. The head is one I made from dry calfskin, dyed rich brown at the customer's request.

The headplate of the instrument is jet black ebony, adorned with a bear of American Holley. This is a nice shot of the scrollwork headstock which helps place it in an era earlier than its own!

Fender P Bass Lyte Restoration

In the early 90's Fender was building instruments in Japan and some of them came with this really snazzy looking wood. Except, it was just snazzy paper embedded under the finish printed to give the impression of flamed figure in the wood. This process, known as "foto-flame" is risky, because, well you can see...

Over time the paper can loosen from the wood wreaking all kinds of havoc. This instrument is in my care to restore the finish to its original glory. I start by carefully flaking clear coat off the only surfaces that I want to preserve: the decal and serial number.

The remaining finish is heated under an infrared lamp and scraped off. After the surfaces are level sanded, we can begin the layout for, oh ya, genuine flamed maple veneer!

A top and back veneer are resawn from that billet and sanded very thin. This will cover the whole surface to the perimeter where the dark paint of the sunburst will hide the seam. You'll see.

Here is the body after veneer application and finish sanding. All the contours have to be filled and smoothed before I seal and color coat it.

One of the things I noticed about the old finish was the huge gradient between light and dark patches of "grain" in that picture. To achieve this in reality we apply dark stain and then sand back. This looks weird right now, but eye on the prize...

First the instrument is shot with light blue, mixed to the hue of the original. Then the black is faded in along the edges. Notice how that dark dye accentuates the grain. Next, many coats of clear lacquer are applied.

This clear lacquer now needs to be sanded flat in preparation for buffing. We have to go slow so as not to burn through the color.  

Finally, after reassembly including some preamp work, the P Bass Lyte is ready to rock! Scroll on for a few more photos...