1950s George Formby Resonator Banjo Ukulele
Well, it's not leaning on a lamppost, but this old Formby-branded (Dallas? British-made? ...reminds me of GH&S products) banjo uke sure has the style going!
Jose gave this one a running-through -- a level/dress of the frets, fitting of a new bridge and strings, and some good setup work -- and it's now playing spot-on. He fit a new nut, too, and side dots.
The construction is very simple on this instrument and it lacks a heavy tonering so it's a nice, easy-to-hold instrument despite its wider head and full resonator. The only improvement I would make beyond what you see would be some geared Gotoh UPT pegs or similar for ease-of-use.
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I do know it’s history fairly well, because it belonged to my father WRC Currie (1910-1999), who owned and played many instruments, mainly banjo (1920’s Slingerland Pal), but also guitar, piano/organ, sax, harmonicas, trumpet, uke and fiddle too.
So, I inherited the banjolele, and it has ‘sat in storage’ for the past 25 years. I’ve just opened up the box to see what might need to be done to put it back into good, playing condition.
The first thing I noted was that some of the fingerboard overlay sections were ‘loose and falling off’, so I collected them (and the frets that were also loose), to stick in a bag so nothing got lost.
BUT, as I was doing that, it seemed odd to me that the leading edge of the section of overlay still on the fretboard clearly did ‘not line up’ with the straight fret-grooves cut into the fingerboard. Further inspection has lead me to the conclusion that the entire fretboard ‘spacing’ has been ‘graduated’ to give a longer interval on the “high note side” than on the “low note side” over the whole range.
EVERY FRET IS AT A SLIGHT, INCREASING ANGLE FROM THE NUT (0 – zero) as you go up the neck, with the high-note-side interval from the nut to the 12-th fret being ‘178 mm ‘, and the low-note-side ’175 mm ‘.
The frets too are ‘curved’ rather than straight; so the ‘compensation’ appears to be graduated ACROSS the neck as well as ALONG the neck, again increasing from ‘low-side’ to ‘high-side’. The gap between the 1st to 2nd fret goes from 1.66mm to 1.68mm.
I’ve been messing around with fretted instruments all my life and I have NEVER seen anything quite like this before! Reading up on numerous articles (mostly with math I don’t understand) did not seem to describe anything like what I’m seeing (and measuring).
Since the original fret-grooves are cut STRAIGHT across the fingerboard, it looks like this may be a post-manufacture modification? But who would go to the ‘trouble’? The work required would have been MASSIVE compared to the value of the instrument!
Tried to include a pic, bit it did not come out.