BNL Feature
From the Banjo Newsletter, November 2000
By Geoff Hohwald
Geoff Hohwald has been playing and teaching the banjo for almost 40 years.
He has been featured in BNL (March 1982) and Bluegrass Unlimited. He has
done interviews of both Vince Sadovsky and Herb Trotman for BNL. Geoff is
best known for publishing five Banjo instruction books and videos. The most
popular is The Banjo Primer which has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide.
Geoff, along with Bert Casey, runs Cassette and Video Learning Systems which
includes banjo and bluegrass related products.
When I first noticed Gold Tone Banjo's booth at a California trade show in
1993, my initial thought was "Here's two more dreamers trying to earn a
living making banjos because they don't like their day job." I thought I'd
stop by to suggest their dream was an impossible one. Imagine my surprise
when, after looking at the banjos, I realized they were being sold for about
half of what I thought they were worth.
As of January 2000, the suggested retail prices for Gold Tone banjos ranged
from $299 for their Cripple Creek open back to $999 for the bluegrass
5-string Orange Blossom (OB-250). The Orange Blossom includes a maple neck,
ebony fingerboard, maple body, maple resonator, one-piece zinc-alloy flange,
brass tone ring, brass counter hoop, straight licensed tailpiece, two-way
adjustable truss rod, and Planetary tuning machines. Cosmetics include a
highly flamed maple resonator in two-toned brown sunburst, mother of pearl
headstock inlay, and hearts and flower neck inlay. This banjo has been
endorsed by Frank Wakefield. Two other versions of the Orange Blossom also
are available: the OB-250G, a gold plated edition whose suggested retail
price is $1259, and the OB-250LN Long Neck , priced at $1199.
Gold Tone has 24 models on their website (http://www.goldtone.com),
including bluegrass, clawhammer, tenor, plectrum, banjo bass, mandobanjo and
Banjitars for guitarists. The website also lists different options, parts
and accessories. There's even eight MP3 files to hear some of the
instruments. The company's business is booming, with more than 200 dealers
worldwide.
Gold Tone Banjos' founders are Wayne and Robyn Rogers, folk musicians and
owners of Strings N' Things Music in Titusville, Florida. The couple started
Gold Tone in the early 1990s. The idea came to Wayne one day while trying to
sell a customer a $400 Aria banjo.
"It was a decent banjo, but the customer only had about $200," Wayne
recalled. "I started thinking, 'There are decent guitars for $200, why not
banjos?' "
Wayne checked with banjo parts suppliers to find out if the idea was worth
pursuing. He bought some parts and put a few prototypes together, but
eventually the project was put on hold. Then, while thumbing through a
guitar magazine in 1993, Wayne noticed several ads for travel guitars.
Suddenly, an idea came to him.
Within days, he had carved a maple neck and figured out a new fret scale.
Because many banjoists capo into A, Wayne and Robyn left off the first two
frets and added medium gauge strings. That way, the string tension and the
feel would be consistent with a full-scale neck. They decided to use a 10"
lightweight smaller body and a Remo Pre-Tuned drum head tensioned directly
onto its own counterhoop. The design eliminated brackets and hooks, making
it adjustment-free. The couple then made a deal with Remo to produce a
custom 10" PTS head, and attached it to the 10" Maple body. The result: a
two-and-a-half pound banjo with amazing tone and playability.
It took Wayne and Robyn about three months to set up shop and make jigs to
produce the Travel Banjo. They enlisted the help of Jim McGrane, a
professional woodworker, and John Thompson, a local banjo designer. Next,
they took out classified and display ads. That generated a few sales. But
interest skyrocketed after Spencer Nitchie of BNL wrote a very positive
review. Wayne figures phone queries on the Travel Banjo went from 10 per
week to 10 per day. Soon, they had a full-time employee producing the
banjos, which were selling "as fast as we could make them."
The next step in developing the Gold Tone line was to design a series of
affordable quality banjos in the $300 to $1000 price range. Wayne says the
top priorities were "good tone and excellent playability." However, after
evaluating available parts, he found the affordable import parts were
poorly-designed and didn't fit together well. Most domestic parts were too
expensive for Gold Tone's intended price range.
Wayne and Robyn's solution was to contact offshore parts makers, design
their own exclusive parts and pay for the new tooling. The custom parts -
tension hoops, tone rings, necks, tailpieces, truss rods, lugs and others -
allowed them to maintain high quality, order in bulk and reduce their raw
material costs. The final step was to set up a shop capable of doing the
detailed assembly and set up of each banjo. Fortunately, after 20 years in
the retail music business, Wayne owned his own building. His hairdresser
tenant had decided to move, giving him the work space he needed. With no
rent and much of the work being done by his store employees and repair
staff, Wayne's overhead was slashed. It allowed him to produce affordable
banjos for far less than anyone had dreamed.
Gold Tone introduced five banjo models in the $300-800 price range at the
1993 Anaheim NAMM show. The response was huge and orders were brisk. So
brisk, in fact, that the demand outstripped Wayne and Robyn's production
capabilities. They spent the next six months retooling the shop and cajoling
dealers to be patient.
The Gold Tone shop is located in Titusville, Florida, a few miles west of
the Kennedy Space Center. With a staff of six workers, it produces about 100
banjos per month and has expansion plans that will double production. For
now, the Gold Tone shop mainly assembles banjos and makes custom models,
repairs, modifications and prototypes. The prototypes are built from parts
made in the shop, then sent overseas to be manufactured. The formula has
proven a winner, yielding a superior product in its price range with good
tone, good playability and attractive cosmetics.
Wayne says Gold Tone has borrowed proven designs from vintage instruments,
but also incorporates new features not commonly used in this price range.
Those features include: Maple necks and bodies. Sturdy straight line
tailpieces. Remo pre-tuned heads. Two-way square adjustable truss rods.
Brass tone rings in banjos under $600. Twin coordinator rods in all banjos.
Scalloped fingerboards for open back banjos. A bass banjo. And a variety of
options available for every instrument, including capo spikes, lefty's, etc.
Wayne and Robyn are fanatical about the accurate assembly and set up of each
banjo. They're true believers in the "tightness of parts" theory for quality
of tone. One of them inspects and plays each banjo before shipment to assure
the best possible setup and tone. It takes a lot of time. But they feel it's
crucial to the company's success and keeping dealer orders rolling in. Gold Tone has
made dealer education a major priority.
"Dealers report that our banjos arrive in tune, set-up perfectly, and ready
for the shelf," Wayne said. "I have written a layman's guide to banjo set-up
which we provide to dealers and in our warranty pack (also on our web site).
Hopefully, time permitting, we will shoot a set-up video which will even be
easier to understand. We also are accessible for set-up questions through
e-mail or phone for specific instructions."
In order to use maple necks instead of the typical mahogany - Wayne and
Robyn prefer maple for better sound - a unique two-way compensating square
truss rod was incorporated. Wayne explains that on a mahogany neck, the
traditional truss rod works fine. But on a maple neck, the string tension
may not provide enough pull to achieve the correct neck relief. The two-way
rod eliminates this problem. The square design actually will prevent neck
twisting.
Gold Tone's entry level banjo, the Cripple Creek CC-100 (named by Robyn for
the first song everyone seems to learn) lists for $299. It incorporates
unique design features not commonly found in that price range, such as a
heavy duty straight line tailpiece, accurate fret scale, two-way truss rod
system, double coordinator rods, maple neck, shoe lugs and even a simple brass tone ring.
There are lots of options, including lefties, capo spikes, planetary tuners,
scalloped fingerboards and more. Gold Tone recently added a tenor, plectrum,
Irish tenor, travel banjo and 6-string Banjitar to the CC line.
But what about a $150 banjo? There hasn't been a good one for under $150 in
years. As a result, many potential banjo players interested in learning the
instrument have been discouraged by its price. A young person could mow
lawns for the summer, save up $150 and buy a guitar but not a banjo. A wife
or husband might impulsively buy a banjo as a present for their spouse if
the price was less than $150. In fact, many guitarists started playing
because they bought one on the spur of the moment. But does Wayne think
he'll ever offer a banjo in that range?
"I think a $150 banjo is impossible," explains Wayne. "One of the challenges
is that a traditional banjo can have close to 100 parts and just the price
of these parts drives up the cost. The pre-tuned head idea is promising,
but will consumers buy a banjo with no hooks or brackets? We are also
testing a resin-based body shell, which sounds terrific and may be a good
alternative. But our goal is a banjo for $200."
Another instrument missing from the market had been a $350 to $800
intermediate step-up banjo good enough to play professionally. Gold Tone has
filled that void for the first time since the Baldwin
Style C Banjo and the Gold Star banjo by SAGA. In the mid-1980s, I worked at
a music store that sold a total of about 250 of those two models in a
two-year period. That was fifteen years ago. At the time, each of those
banjos cost less than $600. Gold Tone's BG 250 lists for $599. It's
something Wayne is very proud of.
"We have provided $1000 features in a $600 banjo," says Wayne, "like a brass
tone ring, maple neck, planetary tuners, straight-line tailpiece, 3/4" wood
shell, shoe lugs, double truss rod and a convertible
feature for playing either bluegrass or open-back. Using high quality parts,
it is a heavy banjo, which
increases tone and sustain."
The guitar, not the banjo, was Wayne's first instrument. As a psychology
student at Florida Atlantic University, he earned spending money playing
local coffee houses in the American Primitive guitar style of performers
like Leo Kotkke, John Fahey and Pete Lang, Then, one fateful day, he and a
friend walked into a music store for a set of strings and heard one of the
sales people tuning a banjo.
"All of a sudden he ripped into Cripple Creek and within seconds I was
intrigued and hooked," Wayne remembers.
An hour later, both Wayne and his friend had bought banjos. As Wayne
described it, "I liked the rapid happiness of the notes. There were so many
notes with so little motion of the left hand. It's also an easy music to jam
with folks because most every one knows that same 20 or 25 songs, whereas
playing finger-style guitar was more of a solo effort."
Initially, Wayne finger picked his banjo like a guitar but found that style
did not work for bluegrass banjo. He took lessons from Gary Hoover, who
played with Earl Scruggs, and learned the correct technique. Once Wayne got
the rolls down, he began learning bluegrass songs and craved any
banjo-related music.
Wayne credits Scruggs and a Steve Martin recording, half solo bluegrass
banjo and half comedy, with inspiring him. He started attending bluegrass
festivals and jamming in the parking lots. He next learned the clawhammer
style to accompany Robyn, whose main instrument is the hammer dulcimer. He
mostly plays clawhammer now, but still loves a bluegrass jam.
Wayne started giving banjo lessons in the 1970s. He remembers that most of
his student's banjos initially were virtually unplayable.
"The first lesson was often spent on adjustment and maintenance," Wayne
said.
Half of the students seemed to have an inexpensive Harmony or Silvertone
with the plastic resonators. The necks were incredibly thick with no truss
rods and real narrow under the nut. They always appeared to have high action
because of a bad neck angle. That's one of the most important adjustments on
a banjo.
"We call this the concentric angle -back and forth and left and right-and if not cut properly, it must be
'shimmed' which decreases tone and
stability," Wayne said.
A problem with most imported banjos was their parts were not tight.
Counterhoops were very loose, neck joints were ill-fitted and fret scales
were incorrect. That meant the banjo would not play in
tune up the neck.
Wayne found out proper set-up vastly improved his students' success. Their
success, in turn, boosted sales at his music store.
"Students especially need decent tone and easy fingering," Wayne said. "A
banjo is different than most other stringed instruments, as it has many
parts and needs more adjustments and continued maintenance. Within a short
time I figured out how to adjust about any banjo."
During this time, Wayne began experimenting with banjo modifications.
"I was the type of kid that loved taking things apart'" he says. "Probably
my first banjo modification was taking off the 5th string tuner and
reinstalling it onto a custom bracket down by the tailpiece. That
way it never got in the way of your left hand. It wasn't really pretty, but
was functional and a lot of people were intrigued."
One thing Wayne loves about banjos is the seemingly infinite number of
designs people have come up with over the years.
"Just recently I saw a Paramount banjo that had little clips that attach the
resonator to the flange," he said. "Since we have a banjo that you can play
open-back or with a resonator, I may look into that design on our
convertible banjos to eliminate the thumbscrews we now use."
Part of Wayne's creative method is to borrow and adapt. To come up with a
name for his company, he went through an instrument catalog and wrote down
every name he could think of from Alvarez to Zoom. When he got to
Silvertone, Gold Tone immediately came to mind.
"I was actually surprised no one had used that name for instruments in the
past," he said.
Gold Tone recently released a new product which Wayne calls the most
exciting accessory item for banjo players in the last fifteen years: a
mounted genuine-skin head which can be fitted to any banjo using an 11" Remo
or 5 Star head. It's pre-stretched onto its counterhoop. Wayne says it
requires very little adjustment and has amazing tone both for bluegrass and
open backs. Gold Tone also will be coming out with a
banjo uke, a practice device for right hand picking technique, an F style
mandolin and a new affordable upright electric bass.
Wayne has a knack for developing new ideas, tinkering and surprising
consumers with new products. He says the banjo is regaining popularity. And
there are signs a new generation soon may discover the instrument.
"The Dixie Chicks will help, and last night I heard a new Dave Matthews song
with banjo," he says. "Also, have you noticed the amount of TV commercials
using banjo background? We recently sold a long neck with a pick-up to a
young guy in a Seattle-based rock band who plugs it into a stack of
Marshalls, adds effects, and gives the band a very unique sound. Most of the
consumer base does seem middle-aged or older, but somehow we have to get younger folks interested. The Internet's
many banjo sites will help. Providing good accessible information might be
the key."