1960s Supro (Kay) Resonator Tenor Banjo (Baritone Ukulele Setup)

This is a Kay-made tenor banjo in Supro (National/Valco) livery. These can be pretty cool banjos but, unfortunately, their necks tend to be on the thin side and so some can't take the tension of normal steel strings very well as they age. This one's neck warped a bit as it settled into itself and so we decided with the owners that it might be a nice instrument to string as a "baritone banjo ukulele" with nylon strings to keep the tension low.

The other benefit? It sounds great with nylon! In this case we've used a set of classical guitar strings (the DGBE ones) to string it up as the scale is longer by 3" than a typical baritone uke. Jose leveled and dressed the frets (removing most of the neck relief via taking down the frets) and I tweaked the neck-to-rim mount (to make it more durable and practical) and then set it up. It's original save for a replacement tailpiece which we added.

It plays like a champ, now, and works perfectly for fingerpickers and chord-chuckers alike.