Posts Tagged ‘string instrument’
Gibson Musical Instruments – A Very Short History
No brand name looms larger in the bluegrass banjo world than Gibson. The company’s story goes back to the late 1800s when a young man named Orville Gibson, son of an English immigrant, moved from his native New York to the rapidly-growing industrial town of Kalamazoo, Michigan (“Yes”, said the Kalamazoo Chamber of Commerce in a 1980s publicity campaign, “There Really Is a Kalamazoo”). Although Orville worked a variety of odd jobs to support himself, he was a musician and luthier with radical ideas about instrument construction. The mandolin was the most popular fretted instrument of the day, and Orville’s vision was to apply the same principles of carving and top graduation to the mandolin that Stradivarius and his contemporaries had employed in building their legendary violins.
Orville’s creations were a dramatic departure from the round-back “tater bug” mandolin, with its flat top and its back formed out of narrow strips of bent wood. A group of Kalamazoo investors saw money to be made in marketing Orville’s designs to the mandolin-buying public and the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Company was formed in 1902. Always an enigmatic figure, Orville appears to have had limited involvement with the Gibson company after its first few years. The Gibson company refined and built on Orville’s ideas and responded to the increasing popularity of the tenor banjo by producing its first banjo in 1918—the same year that Orville died back home in New York.
After some initial stumbling in search of the right design, by the late 1920s Gibson was a dominant force in the 4-string tenor banjo market. The company also made a precious few “old-timey” 5-string banjos, primarily for the rural Southern market; it was one of these banjos that Earl Scruggs would use in the years immediately following World War II to develop a new style of picking for bluegrass music. Despite changes in ownership and a relocation from Kalamazoo to Nashville, Tennessee, Gibson banjo production has continued to the current day. Since the late 1980s, the company’s banjo output has consisted largely of reissues of its classic models of the 1920s and 1930s.
This is the first in a mini-series devoted to parts and setup of a modern five-string bluegrass banjo. In this post, we define the major assemblies of the banjo and each component within those assemblies. In future posts we will expand on each of these and on the role each part plays in the setup process.
Pot Assembly:
- Rim – a hoop made of wood or metal that all other parts attach to. Three-ply maple is preferred on high-end banjos.
- Tone Ring – usually constructed of metal, preferably bell-bronze; this part rests on top of the rim and amplifies string vibration.
- Flange – usually constructed of metal (brass or pot metal); this part surrounds the rim and serves as the bottom support for tensioning the head as well as for attachment of the resonator.
- Coordinating Rods – these metal rods span from the bottom to the top of the rim and serve to attach the neck to the pot assembly.
- Head – originally made of calf skin, modern heads are made of mylar. This sits on top of the tone ring and serves as the soundboard of the banjo.
- Tension Hoop – usually made of metal, this sits on top of the head and evenly distributes tension to the head when tightened properly.
- Bracket Hooks – these are individual hooks that span the space between the tension hoop and the flange. These are used to adjust head tension.
- Tailpiece – located at the end of the banjo, on the pot assembly; this serves as a place to attach strings and is adjusted for down pressure on the bridge.
- Bridge – usually made of maple with an ebony top; the main purpose is to transfer string vibration to the head. It also holds the strings in place and can be moved to adjust intonation.
Resonator:
- Usually made of wood; the resonator is a bowl-shaped device that attaches to the back side of the banjo and projects sound forward.
- Wall Lugs – made of metal; these attach to the inside wall of the resonator and serve as a nut to receive the resonator thumb screws
- L-Bracket – these are actually L-shaped metal brackets that are mounted under the flange and attached to the rim. This is the attachment hardware that holds the resonator to the pot assembly.
- Resonator Thumb Screws – made of metal; these pass through the flange and L-bracket to secure the pot assembly to the resonator.
Neck:
- The neck and resonator are usually made from the same type of wood. The neck serves as a playing surface.
- Lag Bolts – these are threaded into the wooden heel of the neck, pass through the rim and connect to the coordinating rods that attach the neck to the pot assembly.
- Truss Rod – this is built into the interior of the neck, spanning the length of the neck and located in a routed channel under the fretboard. The truss rod applies pressure to counteract the pull of the strings.
- Fingerboard – a piece of wood laminted to the front of the neck that holds the frets and decorative inlay. This is the part of the neck that is in contact with the fingertips of the fretting hand.
- Frets – these are the metal bars typically made of nickel-silver and inlaid crossways into the fingerboard. They serve to stop the vibration of the string at the desired note.
- Nut – usually made of bone (plastic on entry-level banjos). This separates the strings a specific width and holds the strings a specific height above the fingerboard.
- Peghead – often shaped like a fiddle body; located at the opposite end of the neck from the pot, the peghead is a part of the neck and serves as a place to mount tuning pegs.
- Tuning pegs – usually geared, tuning pegs serve to tighten the strings to pitch. Guitar-style tuning pegs have tuning knobs on the sides of the peghead, and planetary tuning pegs go straight out the back.
- Inlay – decorative designs typically cut from mother-of-pearl or abalone which ornament the peghead and fingerboard and serve as position markers.
- Binding – decorative strips, usually of plastic, running along the sides of the neck and resonator.
For many years I have used the term bluegrass to describe music when I really didn’t know what the exact definition was. Bluegrass originated during the 1940’s in the US and is actually of sub-genre of country music. Many countries have influenced the bluegrass sound, including places as diverse as Ireland and West Africa.
Bluegrass has a distinct string sound, as its most common instruments are the fiddle, banjo, mandolin and acoustic guitar. During the music, each instrument will take a term improvising or soloing while the others play the accompaniment. While bluegrass may not have a large mainstream following today, many of the world’s biggest bands will dabble in the genre. The most notable recent addition to mainstream bluegrass was with the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers movie Brother Where Art Thou.