Tone ring on Tenor Bango

  1. bmac
    bmac
    I have an old no-name tenor banjo which I restored and am quite satisfied with. The sound interested my wife so she bought a new Deering Goodtime tenor banjo, their least expensive model.

    My no-name has a tone ring of rolled over metal taking the form of an upside down J shape. It is a tight J curve so it appears no different in appearance than one having a solid rod tone ring as most have.

    On the other hand my wifes' Deering Goodtime has no tone ring at all, with the head stretched directly on the maple rim. The wood rim itself acting as the tone ring.

    Her Banjo sounds just as good as mine in my opinion. To get some kind of a comparison the dealer played another Deering with a metal tone ring (the next model up) and then my wifes' and to my untrained ear they sounded about the same. The metal tone ring might have made that one sound a little bit louder, but I couldn't really hear a difference.

    I guess what I am saying is that We are quite impressed with the Deering Goodtime and happy with her purchace. By the way, the Goodtime neck has no truss rod,,, But neither does my no-name and it is very close to 100 yrs old.



    I can't speak with authority about other lower end tenor banjos but we are quite impressed with her Goodtime.
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