Hooks & Nuts

Traditionally, banjo fingerboards have been flat surfaces, just like classical guitars.Steel string guitars have traditionally been built with fingerboards...

A beginning banjo student called us a while back to ask us to address how to hold the thumb of the fretting hand. She tried to hold her thumb in the center of...

A friend of mine of 30 years called me a few days ago and told me he had finally ordered himself a beautiful custom Hartford banjo. Our conversation brought to...

Beginning musician’s struggle with this concept: play the music how you “feel” it. What does that mean? How can that be quantified?

I was in a conversation the other day where a musician said to me, “I decided not to play banjo in our band because we don’t want to ‘look like’ we’re...

I don’t think over fretting is a commonly used term, but what it essentially means is:  Pushing strings harder than necessary on fretted instruments.

A customer who plays an inexpensive Chinese made banjo called me and was confounded by not getting it to sound the way he wanted. 

We are asked regularly, is Bluegrass style finger picking more difficult than Clawhammer? Is Clawhammer more difficult than finger picking? Is plectrum/tenor...

The “wire” for instruments is called music wire. This name does have industrial meaning because it denotes the alloy, temper, hardness, resilience, and tensile...

A customer asked me a great question the other day when I was extolling the virtues of Goodtime banjos. I was talking about the classical purity of tone; the...