1894 Stewart banjo

I’ve told the story of the ukulele I inherited from my grandfather. But I only briefly mentioned the banjo and electric guitar that I inherited from my father-in-law.

The guitar wasn’t in terrible shape — a bit of elbow grease and she came right back to life. I’ll post something about that instrument later. Today, though, my mother-in-law called and wondered about the banjo. It was in terrible condition: when I found it in the basement, the case (once chip cardboard) was mostly green with mold, and lfiting it resulted in the banjo falling out of the bottom. The head was a cheap Weather King plastic head, and had been ripped. There was a random rusty screw embedded in the fretboard by the fifth string — maybe as a poor man’s capo, who knows. The strings were rusted clean through, and had been on it the whole time in storage, which didn’t bode well for the neck.

All in all, a sad case. Most of my father-in-law’s instruments were low end ones when originally purchased, and only accrued value because of their age. So we didn’t know whether it made sense to fix the banjo up given the likely cost.

Then I went on the net to see what I could learn…

It turned out that it was an SS Stewart banjo. SS Stewart made banjos in the Philadephia area starting in 1878, one of the first popular instrument makers in the area (it used to be, instruments were primnarily bought and sold locally, since there wasn’t great shipping available). Banjos used to be a very popular instrument in the US (before we all acquired a distaste for the jangly sound, I suppose), and this particular one had the serial number 7016, which dated it to somewhere between 1890 and 1894. Yep, a 100 year old banjo, almost certainly not my father-in-law’s originally, but probably belonging to at least the generation prior — some of that part of the family is Main Line Philly folks, and probably bought it locally. Most likely, my father-in-law had ended up with it during the Folk Scare.

Now, I don’t know much about banjos — never really played one, though from time to time I had lusted after a guitjo. This, however, was a true old-school open-back banjo, one from before bluegrass, before they gained resonator cones and that piercing tone. A few quick searches told me that SS Stewart banjos was rather sought after by players who want an old-timey “frailing” or “clawhammer” sound and style, rather than the frenetic bluegrass playing popularized by Earl Scruggs. It was worth a few hundred dollars, if it was in playable and presentable condition.

It ended up in the capable hands of Chris Cooper at Buffalo Bros. in Carlsbad. When I showed up with it, he clucked a lot and shook his head. But, he said, it was definitely worth fixing up, and would be perfectly playable. “If we knew how Stewart made his necks, we’d be famous today,” he said. “They’re always straight — no truss rod or anything.” Even after He thought it might take weeks, but it didn’t; I guess working on it caught his fancy. What came back wasn’t even recognizable — a beautiful old instrument that I can barely play but am noodling along with.

He put a synthetic head on it, rather than real calf-skin, since I wouldn’t know much about the maintenance of stretching genuine calf-skin. He removed that unslightly extra screw and filled in the hole so well that I cannot tell where it even was. All the inlay was intact, and so was the tailpiece — apparently a part that gets lost frequently. The strings are a particular nylon variant he recommends, since the banjo was designed for cat gut originally, and putting steel strings on it might twist the neck (though, as noted, that’s what it had on it, in the basement). It doesn’t sound at all like a modern banjo — the sound is softer, somewhat muffled, a tone that is gentler on the ears, though still twangy.

So here she is! All the photos should link to larger images, for the musical instrument geeks among you.