Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The Banjoline returns!
For a while I've been thinking about getting a Banjoline. Eddie Peabody came up with the idea of an instrument played like the plectrum banjo but strung slightly differently the 3rd string is doubled and tuned monotone like a mandolin and the 4th string is doubled and tuned octave, like a 12 string guitar. The body was originally a mandola in it's acoustic form but later, when electric guitars became mainstream, Eddie decided that his banjoline could also go electric and approached Vega to build him such an instrument.
He recorded several albums with his new Banjoline but Vega, a banjo manufacturer, decided to pass the opportunity to go into full scale production and Fender were asked to build them. A prototype was made but the deal fell through and the Rickenbacker company finally went into production of this instrument. They were not mass produced and today they are very rare items and to my knowledge, nothing has been heard of the Banjoline for a while.
My dreams of getting an original must be balanced with the fact that they are expensive so my idea of re-creating the Fender version were completed last month with the modified Chinese Fender copy that my friend Norbert Pietsch helped bring to life. The sound is sweet and it plays very well. I'll make some recordings soon and see how you like it....
Greetings,
Sean.
He recorded several albums with his new Banjoline but Vega, a banjo manufacturer, decided to pass the opportunity to go into full scale production and Fender were asked to build them. A prototype was made but the deal fell through and the Rickenbacker company finally went into production of this instrument. They were not mass produced and today they are very rare items and to my knowledge, nothing has been heard of the Banjoline for a while.
My dreams of getting an original must be balanced with the fact that they are expensive so my idea of re-creating the Fender version were completed last month with the modified Chinese Fender copy that my friend Norbert Pietsch helped bring to life. The sound is sweet and it plays very well. I'll make some recordings soon and see how you like it....
Greetings,
Sean.
