Six string banjos offer both versatility and twang, so setting it up properly will yield wonderful sounds from this instrument.
Before purchasing a 6-string banjo, always test its setup first by playing it yourself to make sure everything works as it should. If not, have it evaluated by a banjo technician immediately.
Neck
The neck is the long piece of wood connecting the peghead and fingerboard. It contains a nut made of ivory, bone or plastic which holds strings with their metal frets in place and also features a heel that adheres securely onto its backside for extra support and prevents shifting.
A banjo’s tuning, playability and durability rely on its nut and heel, both essential elements in their creation. A poorly made instrument without either feature becomes nothing more than wall decor while its counterpart can serve as an invaluable musical instrument.
Deering’s new Good-Time 6-string banjos feature an innovative guitar-style neck with radiused frets for ease of tuning and metal guitar strings instead of nylon ones, enabling players to emphasize low notes essential for Dixieland-style and flatpicking music.
To fine-tune a six-string banjo, first adjust the coordinator rod(s) on its bridge. While many banjos require this step, do not fear undertaking this process on your own; the process isn’t hard! When tightening, make sure not to overtighten one as that will loosen both sides; once these adjustments have been completed, loosen and retune all strings accordingly.
Bridge
The bridge of a banjo is essential to its tone. For maximum impact, it must be situated precisely where needed on each string, then tightened securely enough so as not to move around when played. Finding its exact placement requires proper strings as well as harmonic analysis of your banjo to pinpoint exactly where its bridge resides.
Checking a bridge is easy by playing strings above the 12th fret harmonic and listening for it to ring clearly and at approximately the same pitch when played normally; otherwise, something is off and requires adjustment of your bridge position. Harmonics may also come in handy when installing new strings or tightening up headstock screws – something harmonics make easy!
Most Six String Banjos feature radiused necks to help with string placement on the fingerboard, but some like Gretsch “Dixie 6” and Deering’s Goodtime Solana do not, which may present difficulties for steel-string guitarist players.
A 6-string banjo can be used in numerous ways to play various styles of music, from bluegrass and oldtime to jazz and reggae. Though its reentrant last string makes playing various rolls more challenging, it is still possible; though additional effort will likely be needed in getting them just right; and they may differ slightly from what is found when using 5-string banjos.
Fingerboard
Some may consider a 6-string banjo (or banjitar) not to be an authentic banjo due to the original refined American banjo having five strings with a drone string; however, these instruments can still prove invaluable in certain genres and forms of music, particularly guitar players whose parts require them for short amounts of time (ie: just few bars).
One of the greatest challenges with 6-string banjos is that strumming open chords often sounds discordant. While this problem exists on other stringed instruments as well, banjos tend to create “hitchhiker” vibrations in addition to root frequencies – usually an octave higher but sometimes two octaves higher – which give their distinctive sound.
One issue with many 6-string banjos is their often large resonators attached to the head, adding volume while making the banjo easier to hear, yet often reducing sustain and sounding bad. To find a playable banjo without one is ideal if possible; otherwise one could possibly be made playable with some work done to the resonator later if desired and replaced by more subtle sounding rings later.
Strings
Some will claim that a six string banjo isn’t real; they believe only five-string instruments qualify as true banjos. I agree that the reentrant 5th is essential in creating banjo sound but it certainly isn’t the only contributor. Six string banjos have been around for over 100 years and some of the greatest recordings made with six string banjos.
Picking the strings on a Six String Banjo should be done carefully to achieve optimal overtones and to enhance its sound. Position them near the neck heel so that their bridge lies 12 1/4 to 13″ from the twelfth fret; this will influence overtones at this location and ultimately alter its sound quality.
As an easy way to test if your banjo is set up correctly, push down on the strings just behind the 12th fret and listen for how they sound – if muddy or low sounding, adjust coordinator rods slightly for best results.
Acoustic blues guitarists using six string banjos often opt to replace the fifth and sixth (Low E) strings with lighter strings tuned an octave or two higher so that bar chords played by their left hand don’t ring when using bar chords in bar chords with their left hand. While this requires some practice, this opens up many songs which would otherwise not be playable on five string banjos.