Six string banjo for guitarists....yes or no?

Tony Palmer · Post by **Tony Palmer** » 4 Aug 2019 10:21 am

I saw Keith Urban playing one in a video (thatâ€™s a WHOLE other story Old Town Road!) and of course sounded great. Anybody have/play one?

Joachim Kettner · Post by **Joachim Kettner** » 4 Aug 2019 11:03 am

Stop, Stop, Stop by the Hollies was played on one, great sounding. But for Country or Bluegrass it's not my taste.

K Maul · Post by **K Maul** » 4 Aug 2019 4:24 pm

Saints preserve us!

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 4 Aug 2019 6:38 pm

What could be worse?

Roger Crawford · Post by **Roger Crawford** » 4 Aug 2019 6:54 pm

b0b, being accompanied by an accordion?

Ian Rae · Post by **Ian Rae** » 4 Aug 2019 9:21 pm

What about an accordion with 88 keys for pianists?

James Flaherty · Post by **James Flaherty** » 4 Aug 2019 10:23 pm

Isn't a banjo just a snare drum with strings? lol

Brooks Montgomery · Post by **Brooks Montgomery** » 5 Aug 2019 5:08 am

There’s a pretty good chance that a six string banjo will sound better. The odds are better that one of the strings will be in tune.

Frank Freniere · Post by **Frank Freniere** » 5 Aug 2019 5:38 am

b0b wrote:What could be worse?

A 12-string banjo?

Fred Treece · Post by **Fred Treece** » 5 Aug 2019 7:51 am

I played around with one that a songwriter acquaintance has been using. It’s a good way to get a banjo sound without having to learn how to play banjo. He basically fingerpicks guitar stuff. I could see using some alternate tunings and capo’ing that could imitate 5-string sounds, or maybe just to get something completely different out of it. Easy way to claim “multi-instrumentalist”.

Barry Blackwood · Post by **Barry Blackwood** » 5 Aug 2019 8:25 am

What could be worse?

https://realitone.com/products/realibanjo

Brooks Montgomery · Post by **Brooks Montgomery** » 5 Aug 2019 8:36 am

Barry Blackwood wrote:
What could be worse?
https://realitone.com/products/realibanjo

Toys in hell.

Ken Pippus · Post by **Ken Pippus** » 5 Aug 2019 9:02 am

Guitar banjos sound like a guitarist trying, generally ineffectively, to sound like a banjo player.

In response to the "what could be worse" question, a mandolin banjo generally produces a sound like trying to cut a trash can lid with a bandsaw: it may not be musical, but it certainly is loud.

James Flaherty · Post by **James Flaherty** » 5 Aug 2019 9:08 am

I just can't wait to make my steel guitar sound like a banjo...NOT!

Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 5 Aug 2019 9:36 am

b0b wrote:What could be worse?

Many, many years ago, a friend of mine picked up a real old Gibson banjo/mandolin (banjolin?).

It was a beautiful instrument but sounded horrible ... probably worse than horrible.

Fred Treece · Post by **Fred Treece** » 5 Aug 2019 9:42 am

Ken Pippus wrote:Guitar banjos sound like a guitarist trying, generally ineffectively, to sound like a banjo player.

Except when they’re not trying to sound like a banjo player.

A friend of mine who is an excellent banjo player once assured me, after I expressed some reticence about ever learning to play one, that it is just “a funny-tuned guitar with one less string”.

Mike Bacciarini · Post by **Mike Bacciarini** » 5 Aug 2019 1:18 pm

I vote they all be traded in for the 0-string banjo.

Jerry Hayes R.I.P. · Post by **Jerry Hayes R.I.P.** » 8 Aug 2019 2:18 am

On the "Woodsongs" TV show at one point they had a bluegrass band from one of the services where the banjo player was using a 4 string banjo finger style and sounded just about like a 5 stringer. Pretty impressive I thought.

I do quite a few banjo instrumentals on guitar which I'd like to try on a 6 string banjo for the fun of it. If you just hold the first string down on the 3rd fret and then work around the 2nd, 3rd & 4th strings for the melodies you can get some good stuff. Also on my Telecaster I have Keith/Scruggs pegs on strings 1 & 5 (see picture.....JH in Va.

David DeLoach · Post by **David DeLoach** » 8 Aug 2019 2:51 am

I personally don't care for the guitar-banjo hybrid. It's one stringed instrument that's NOT on my wish list.

However James Taylor played one on Neil Young's OLD MAN and I dig that tune.

Ian Rae · Post by **Ian Rae** » 8 Aug 2019 2:57 am

Barry, I listened to the banjo robot thingy you posted about and although it's very clever it somehow doesn't quite sound convincing. Because it's in tune, I guess. A refinement would be to randomly detune a different string each time you load it.

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 8 Aug 2019 5:56 am

It is OK, and has it's place, like any other instrument. I've been in 2 bands where the guitar player had one. 1 band used it on one song. That was "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy". The banjo is pretty prominent in that song, and was actually the best part of the song. The other band used it 2 times, and 1 of the songs he switched to it only for 1 verse if I remember right.

Bart Bull · Post by **Bart Bull** » 8 Aug 2019 2:08 pm

Danny Barker â€”Â Mister Barker, as a generation of brass band players grew up calling him, with deep respect â€” played guitar and six string banjo with Cab Calloway's supremely successful big band for a decade or so, directly leading to Louis Jordan...and once you're dealing in Louis Jordan, you're awfully close to what will be called rock 'n' roll....as long you have, as we say in New Orleans, the right complexion for the connection.

Mister Barker returned to New Orleans, gigged constantly in bands and as a frontman, and pretty much single-handedly restored the connective tissue of brass band music traditions to the generation of children that would grow up to be the Dirty Dozen, the Rebirth Brass Band, The New Birth, and ever so many more, teaching them the traditions, the grooves, the tunes...and the gut-shaking, money-making jokes.

He did this while playing the deplorable, disgusting, unnspeakable six-string banjo.
Shame on him.

Silll, when they laid him down, there wasn't a musician in New Orleans who wasn't playing or marching. Despite his six string banjo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hek2KQcD8_M
(This sounds like guitar to me; regardless, to this day, there's not a child in Jackson Square doesn't steal some verses...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZi1Da90etw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiAM4edHB_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA75jxF8o3Y

Joachim Kettner · Post by **Joachim Kettner** » 10 Aug 2019 10:21 am

The six string banjo starts at the middle of this tune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX5E0zPbCpw

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 10 Aug 2019 3:22 pm

Joachim Kettner wrote:The six string banjo starts at the middle of this tune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX5E0zPbCpw

Thanks for the warning. (I won't click it.)

Dom Franco · Post by **Dom Franco** » 11 Aug 2019 7:27 am

I have a six string Banjo or "Bantar" as it's called.
I replaced the low "E" and "A" strings with unwound strings tuned an octave or 2 higher.

It works reasonable well for some background tracks since I don't have a 5 string anymore.

strumming bar chords up the fretboard with a flat pick I can simulate an old timey 4 string for some Dixieland songs.

Since I play for older folks who like "5 foot 2", Hello Dolly, I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy and such. It has a place in my studio.