c.1920 French-made "Canto" Banjo Mandolin

This is a customer's instrument in for repair. It's all original save a new bridge. This one is from France and dates from around 1920 or thereabouts. It's a nice little player (now) with good volume and that characteristic frontal trebly attack typical of European-design banjos with their zither-banjo style top-tension rims.

The work on this included a fret level/dress, lots of cleaning, a new nut, new bridge, some recut to the fretboard extension, shimming of the neck/pot join, and some recut to the tension hoop/top part of the rim design which was sticking up too high and interfered with the strings.

Fun headstock! I also forgot that I had to replace a missing button on one tuner.

Interestingly, there are dots inlaid at each fret -- cream ones on "useful locations" and black on other locations.

It's a cute looker, too. I had to patch the head from behind in two spots where it split when tensioning it up. I figure this instrument hasn't been played in at least 70 years, so those patched tiny tears seem hardly significant.

This is a quick player and the action is dead-on 1/16" at the 12th fret.

Note the cute "Canto" burn-in at the heel.

The pot and resonator rear are all built from mahogany. The rim is several laminations thick making it pretty stable.

It has an Italian-style tailpiece with 4 hooks vs. the American-style 8.