September was a quiet month in the shop, since I wasn’t there a lot of the time. About half of the month was taken up with visits from family members, which were nice. I did make a batch of stock banjos, including #352-#354 and wood topped banjo #5. They are all shown on the Banjos page. I didn’t build any custom instruments in September but did make some armrests and tension hoops and such to order.
October banjos started with #355, which uses the Kraske-style rim I made several months ago and has a new walnut neck. This customer likes to do his own finishing, so this neck was shipped unfinished. He had finished the rim and aged the brass parts of the hardware since I shipped the rim with the earlier factory neck. This was my first attempt at binding a banjo peghead, and it was somewhat successful, but not as neat as I wish it had been.
Next was #356, a banjo designed by the person who commissioned it specifically for playing music from India. It has four drone strings, in pairs, and four separate strings. Each drone string has four spikes, for a total of 16, by far the largest number I have ever put on one banjo. It is a 12″ mahogany banjo, with a Dobson tone ring.
Banjo #357 was a stock-adjacent design, with the only changes being full frets instead of a scoop, and a Dobson style heel. It is a cherry 11″ banjo with a jatoba fretboard.
Banjo #358 was a cherry tenor, with aged brass hardware and a hickory fretboard. The customer ordered a bent rim blank from Cooperman, and also made a couple of very nice bridges for this banjo, one of which I installed when setting it up.
359 and 360 are stock walnut 12″ banjos with different tone rings and are shown on the Banjos page.
I have 8 banjos from 2023 that are still left in stock, and I will be offering a 10% discount on them through the end of the year. 6 are 11″ standard scale length banjos, one is a 12″ 5+1 or 6 string convertible banjo, and one is a cello banjo. When I build stock banjos it’s always guesswork to decide what to make, based on what has sold recently, or sometimes if I want to try something different as an experiment. The lowered prices are shown on those banjos’ individual pages as well as on the Banjos page. These banjos are new, but slightly stale, like the baked goods on the shelf at the back of the grocery store that say REDUCED FOR QUICK SALE.
I am hoping to make a new website with a new company, but probably won't get to it till January or so. I've been happy with xtq.xka.mybluehost.me/website_24722f49/ till the last year or so, but things are going downhill and it's time to jump off.
In November I have very little custom work scheduled, but I have some guitars to build if no custom jobs are forthcoming. I am currently out of archtop guitars again and want to build two, a full size 17″ one and a 14″ experimental one. Also I am still vaguely hoping to get myself together and build a 12 string dreadnought some day soon.