Bass banjo

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Bass banjo
1930's Gibson bass banjo ad.jpg
Other namesCello banjo, Banjocello
Classification String instrument (plucked)
Hornbostel–Sachs classification 321.322-5
DevelopedLate 19th century
Playing range
Range contrabass.png
Related instruments

There are multiple instruments referred to as a bass banjo. The first to enter real production was the five-string cello banjo, tuned one octave below a five-string banjo. This was followed by a four-string cello banjo, tuned CGDA in the same range as a cello or mandocello, and modified upright bass versions tuned EADG. More recently, true bass banjos, tuned EADG and played in conventional horizontal fashion have been introduced.

Contents

Five-string cello banjo

Advertising copy for Stewart 5-string cello, ca. 1898 Sss basslargead.gif
Advertising copy for Stewart 5-string cello, ca. 1898

The five-string cello banjo was originally a gut-stringed instrument with a 3 in (76 mm) deep 16 in (410 mm) diameter rim, marketed by S.S. Stewart in 1889. [1] Advertising copy used the terms "bass banjo" and "cello banjo" to refer to the same instrument.

Other banjo makers manufactured similar instruments, including A.C. Fairbanks, with a 12+38 in (310 mm) diameter head and a 29+12 in (750 mm) scale length [2] and A.A. Farland, with 12+12 in (320 mm) head and a 28+12 in (720 mm) scale. [3] Gold Tone is the only contemporary manufacturer. [4]

Four-string cello banjo

In 1919, [5] Gibson began manufacturing a 4-string cello banjo, known as the CB-4. [6] Other vintage manufacturers of four-string bass banjos include Bacon & Day. [7] [ verification needed ] Gold Tone is the only contemporary manufacturer. [8]

Gibson bass banjo

Gibson produced a separate instrument called a "bass banjo" from 1930 to 1933. [5] This was a 4-string instrument, played as an upright bass, with a stand substituting for a spike. It was tuned EADG, the same as Gibson's mando-bass. [9]

Bassjo

The Bassjo, also referred to as the banjo bass in a 2006 article featuring Les Claypool on the cover of Bassplayer Magazine [10] was made by luthier Dan Maloney. Maloney was a friend of Claypool's approximately ten years ago when Claypool asked him to construct a guitar with "a banjo body and a bass neck ("Les Does More" 43)." The Bassjo can be heard on Claypool's 2006 album "Of Whales and Woe" on the track Iowan Gal", as well as Primus' "Captain Shiner" from the album Tales from the Punchbowl

Gold Tone bass banjo

Gold Tone Music Group produces a commercial version of the bass banjo. [11] It has a 32 in (810 mm) scale and a 13 in (330 mm) pot.

Heftone upright

An unusual variation is the Heftone bass, which combines a large, 22 in (560 mm) banjo pot with an upright spindle to produce an upright bass banjo. [12]

Bass and Cello Banjos
Gold Tone four-string Cello banjo Cello banjo from Gold Tone.jpg
Gold Tone four-string Cello banjo
A.C. Fairbanks "Whyte Laydie No. 2 in (51 mm) 5-string cello banjo Circa 1903, S/N 22924 Laydie 001.jpg
A.C. Fairbanks “Whyte Laydie No. 2 in (51 mm) 5-string cello banjo Circa 1903, S/N 22924
1902 A.A. Farland 5-string cello banjo 1902 A.A. Farland 5-string cello banjo.jpg
1902 A.A. Farland 5-string cello banjo
Item-bb-400-(bass-banjo)-1398 lg.jpg
Five-string cello banjo and a banjeaurine from S.S. Stewart Stewartbanjos.jpg
Five-string cello banjo and a banjeaurine from S.S. Stewart
1929 Gibson Bass Banjo at the American Banjo Museum. 1929 Gibson Bass Banjo.jpg
1929 Gibson Bass Banjo at the American Banjo Museum.

Related Research Articles

The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, in modern forms usually made of plastic, originally of animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents. In the 19th century, interest in the instrument was spread across the United States and United Kingdom by traveling shows of the 19th-century minstrel show fad, followed by mass-production and mail-order sales, including instruction method books. The inexpensive or home-made banjo remained part of rural folk culture, but 5-string and 4-string banjos also became popular for home parlor music entertainment, college music clubs, and early 20th century jazz bands. By the early 21st century, the banjo was most frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, but was also used in some rock, pop and even hip-hop music. Among rock bands, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Some famous pickers of the banjo are Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bass guitar</span> Electric plucked string instrument

The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length. The bass guitar most commonly has four strings, though five- and six-stringed models are also relatively popular, and bass guitars with even more strings or courses have been built. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has largely come to replace the double bass in popular music due to its lighter weight, the inclusion of frets in most models, and, most importantly, its design for electric amplification. This is also because the double bass is acoustically compromised for its range in that it is scaled down from the optimal size that would be appropriate for those low notes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Double bass</span> Bowed string instrument

The double bass, also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra. Similar in structure to the cello, it has four or five strings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electric guitar</span> Electrical string musical instrument

An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickups to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals, which ultimately are reproduced as sound by loudspeakers. The sound is sometimes shaped or electronically altered to achieve different timbres or tonal qualities from that of an acoustic guitar via amplifier settings or knobs on the guitar. Often, this is done through the use of effects such as reverb, distortion and "overdrive"; the latter is considered to be a key element of electric blues guitar music and jazz, rock and heavy-metal guitar-playing. Designs also exist combining attributes of the electric and acoustic guitars: the semi-acoustic and acoustic-electric guitars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mandolin</span> Musical instrument in the lute family

A mandolin is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of eight strings. A variety of string types are used, with steel strings being the most common and usually the least expensive. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin. Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twelve-string guitar</span> Fretted string instrument optimized for richer sounds

A twelve-string guitar is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in octaves, with those of the upper two courses tuned in unison. The gap between the strings within each dual-string course is narrow, and the strings of each course are fretted and plucked as a single unit. The neck is wider, to accommodate the extra strings, and is similar to the width of a classical guitar neck. The sound, particularly on acoustic instruments, is fuller and more harmonically resonant than six-string instruments. The 12-string guitar can be played like a 6-string guitar as players still use the same notes, chords and guitar techniques like a standard 6-string guitar, but advanced techniques might be tough as players need to play or pluck two strings simultaneously.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acoustic bass guitar</span> Type of acoustic instrument

The acoustic bass guitar is a bass instrument with a hollow wooden body similar to, though usually larger than, a steel-string acoustic guitar. Like the traditional electric bass guitar and the double bass, the acoustic bass guitar commonly has four strings, which are normally tuned E-A-D-G, an octave below the lowest four strings of the 6-string guitar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banjo ukulele</span> Hybrid musical instrument

The banjo ukulele, also known as the banjolele or banjo uke, is a four-stringed musical instrument with a small banjo-type body and a fretted ukulele neck. The earliest known banjoleles were built by John A. Bolander and by Alvin D. Keech, both in 1917.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gibson Firebird</span> Solid body electric guitar

The Gibson Firebird is a solid-body electric guitar manufactured by Gibson beginning in 1963.

Variax was the name of a line of guitars developed and marketed by Line 6 between 2002 and 2023. They differed from typical electric and acoustic guitars in that internal electronics processed the sound from individual strings to model (replicate) the sound of specific guitars and other instruments. The maker claims it was the first guitar family able to emulate the tones of other notable electric and acoustic guitars. It also provided a banjo and a sitar tone. The Variax was available primarily in electric guitar models, but acoustic and electric bass guitar models have also been available in the past.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">String (music)</span> Sound producing musical instrument component

In music, strings are long flexible structures on string instruments that produce sound through vibration. Strings are held under tension so that they can vibrate freely, but with control. This is to make the string vibrate at the desired pitch, with looser strings producing lower pitches, and tighter strings producing higher pitches. However, a vibrating string produces very little sound in of itself. Therefore, most string instruments have a sounding board to amplify the sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tenor guitar</span> Four-stringed guitar

The tenor guitar or four-string guitar is a slightly smaller, four-string relative of the steel-string acoustic guitar or electric guitar. The instrument was initially developed in its acoustic form by Gibson and C.F. Martin so that players of the four-string tenor banjo could double on guitar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mandolin-banjo</span>

The mandolin-banjo is a hybrid instrument, combining a banjo body with the neck and tuning of a mandolin. It is a soprano banjo. It has been independently invented in more than one country, variously being called mandolin-banjo,banjo-mandolin,banjolin and banjourine in English-speaking countries, banjoline and bandoline in France, and the Cümbüş in Turkey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Headstock</span> Part of the guitar which houses the pegs

A headstock or peghead is part of a guitar or similar stringed instruments such as a lute, mandolin, banjo, ukulele and others of the lute lineage. The main function of a headstock is to house the tuning pegs or other mechanism that holds the strings at the "head" of the instrument; it corresponds to a pegbox in the violin family. At the "tail" of the instrument the strings are usually held by a tailpiece or bridge. Machine heads on the headstock are commonly used to tune the instrument by adjusting the tension of strings and, consequently, the pitch of sound they produce.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stagg Music</span> Belgian musical instrument company

Stagg music is a Belgian musical instrument company headquartered in Brussels, currently a subsidiary of EMD Music. The company produce a wide range of musical instruments, which includes string instruments, percussion instruments, tuned metal, free reed and brass instruments as well as effects units and other accessories.

The scale length of a string instrument is the maximum vibrating length of the strings that produce sound, and determines the range of tones that string can produce at a given tension. It is also called string length. On instruments in which strings are not "stopped" or divided in length, it is the actual length of string between the nut and the bridge.

A solid-body musical instrument is a string instrument such as a guitar, bass or violin built without its normal sound box and relying on an electromagnetic pickup system to directly detect the vibrations of the strings; these instruments are usually plugged into an instrument amplifier and loudspeaker to be heard. Solid-body instruments are preferred in situations where acoustic feedback may otherwise be a problem and are inherently both less expensive to build and more rugged than acoustic electric instruments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Gibson (musician)</span> American musician

Brian Gibson is an American musician, artist, and video game developer based in Providence, Rhode Island. Gibson is best known as the bassist for the band Lightning Bolt. In the summer of 2015 he co-founded the game development company Drool. At Drool, he created the art and music for the video game Thumper and co-designed the game alongside Marc Flury. Thumper was released with critical acclaim in October 2016. He was previously a lead artist working at video game company Harmonix since 2001, but quit in the summer of 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kay Musical Instrument Company</span>

Kay Musical Instrument Company is an American musical instrument manufacturer established in 1931 by namesake Henry "Kay" Kuhrmeyer and based in Chicago, Illinois. It was formed when Kuhrmeyer bought out his financial backers in the instrument manufacturer Stromberg-Voisinet. They produced guitars, mandolins, banjos, ukuleles and were known for their use of lamination in the construction of arched top instruments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tenor violin</span> Musical Instrument

A tenor violin (or tenor viola) is an instrument with a range between those of the cello and the viola. An earlier development of the evolution of the violin family of instruments, the instrument is not standard in the modern symphony orchestra. Its tuning, typically G2-D3-A3-E4 (an octave below the regular violin) places the range between the cello and viola and thus is sometimes confused with the modern baritone violin which has the same tuning on the standard violin body.

References

  1. "String Stories, Chapter 1: Banjo Orchestra!". www.forgottenwisdom.com. Archived from the original on January 16, 2006. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
  2. "White Laydie No. 2". www.billsbanjos.com. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
  3. "Artist's Grande No.2". www.billsbanjos.com. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
  4. "CEB 5 by Gold Tone". Archived from the original on April 17, 2015.
  5. 1 2 "Gibson Banjos...The Golden Years". Archived from the original on 2008-08-20. Retrieved 2008-06-21.
  6. "العاب زوما".
  7. "For Sale or Trade: Bacon & Day Silverbell Cello banjo 14 inch pot". www.banjobuyer.com. Archived from the original on December 1, 2008. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
  8. "CEB 4 (Marcy Marxer Signature Model) by Gold Tone". Archived from the original on July 5, 2008.
  9. "www.DRBANJO.com". Archived from the original on October 20, 2007.
  10. Fox, Brian. "Les Does More." Bass Player 8/2006: 40-50.
  11. "BB-400 (Bass Banjo) by Gold Tone". Archived from the original on May 12, 2008.
  12. "About the Heftone Bass | Heftone". www.heftone.com. Retrieved 2023-03-27.