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Electric Hank
#54  2019
 

This neck was made on a vintage Electric pot kindly given by my friend Hank Schwartz, a famous collector of early Fairbanks and Minstrel banjos. Thanks to him!
Calfskin head, mahogany neck. I did not intend to make a replica of an Electric banjo, so here are also Gotoh pegs, a scooped end, steel strings and a NoKnot tailpiece. 

But I wanted to stay close to the original Electric banjos of this time. So I made most of the inlays from existing ones taken on several Fairbanks banjos, mostly Electric, or in the same state of mind. Bill Michal has a wonderful collection of beautiful Fairbanks banjos, this was a great source of inspiration. You will see that I've mixed 2 different kind of pearl on some inlays, like it was sometimes done (one of the pearl remaining plain, not engraved). Have you also noticed that 7 of the inlays have the same idea of a S shape, in a way or another, to be in coherence with the idea of the inlay on the head... ?  (head, 3 , 5, 10, 12, 14, back of the head)

The engraving is also in the same spirit of this time. Inlays and engraving beeing not as fancy as on the later WL or Tubaphones (too fancy for me).

 

Click on of one the images to see them all in a bigger size.