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…

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