1880s/1920s/2020 4-String Fretless Pony Banjo

This anachronistic little weirdo is made-up from components gifted, salvaged, and spare. I whipped it up for my banjo-crazy buddy Forrest as a little present.

The absurdly-pretty birdseye maple neck was a gift-to-me from Mr. Hugh, who'd had it hanging-up in his workshop for a long while. It seems to have been an unused blank banjo neck in the Buckbee style from the 1880s -- or built in that style a bit later. It has plenty of small flecks of grime and filler that's -- well -- staying with it.

The rim is 1920s Lyon & Healy banjo uke salvage as the neck that fits it was quite destroyed. It has no tonering but it's a good, quality rim and has an interesting metal lip on it "foot." All the rim hardware is original, too.

The tuners are a spare set of 3 "Pegheds" 4:1 geared uke tuners and 1 banjo 5th-peg tuner. I'm not a huge fan of the typical backlash on the 5th-peg tuner, but otherwise these are working nicely, hold well, and look fantastic on this instrument.

My basic idea for this is a 5-string banjo minus the low string and tuned up to A over normal G tuning. So, instead of aEAC#E low to high, it's tuned aAC#E low to high. I was thinking of using nylon or Nylgut strings on it to begin with so it'd sound like a minstrel-style banjo from the early 1800s (a lot of those had 2 or 3 strings plus adrone rather than the "normal" 5 total), but instead I used steel strings because I know Mr. F will probably use it more with them on it.

Work included: fitting the neck to the rim, installing the tuners, fitting a "fret nut," cleaning, a parts-bin bridge fit, and setup.

Setup notes: it plays spot-on with hair-over 1/16" action at the "12th fret" location. The neck is straight and string gauges are 10/18w/13/10 drone-to-high.

Scale length: 21 3/4"

Nut width: 1 1/4"

String spacing at nut: 13/16"

String spacing at bridge: 1 7/16"

Head diameter: 6 7/8"

Rim depth: 2 1/4"

Rim material: ply maple(?)

Neck wood: birdseye maple (highly figured)

Bridge: maple/ebony

Neck feel: slim-to-medium soft V, flat board

Condition notes: ...it's a hodge-podge, what's to note?