tenor banjos - any recommendations?

[duggyk]

howdy, im considering getting meself a tenor banjo - any recommendations?

any thoughts about what i should be considering - scale, tuning etc?

cheers!

[Danny]

Personally i'd go the american route tuning wise, scale length I think tends to be about 22 inches or so typically. I think.

Those tenor guitars that Eagle sell's are pretty good, had a go on one last december at the retreat

[jonfreeman]

The tenor is most commonly tuned in 5ths. From there, common tunings are often termed as "Jazz/Std" and "Iirsh". The former goes CGDA and the other goes lower to GDAE - if you could play in one, all your fingering would work with the other. It would just come out in a different key.

I suppose it depends on what you want to do but an attraction with the Irish tuning is that it puts you exactly one octave below a mandolin or fiddle. Their most natural keys are yours and if say you picked up a mandolin and (allowing for the frets being a bit further apart) and played the pattern you had learned on tenor banjo, you would be in the same key.

With the open fingering I use, I am more comfortable with a 17 fret model. I can make the B, 7th fret on the E string with the other but it's more of a stretch than I like.

[duggyk]

hi John, thanks for the info - it didn't twig with me before... that the CGDA is 5ths just as much as GDAE is also 5ths... i think i need to go and try some out (once i've saved my pennies) to get an idea on scale lengths.

cheers.

[jonfreeman]

Good luck in finding one that feels good for you.