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Hunting
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Now with Corinne in WA.
No maker's marks, probably built by Buckbee. Dowel is stamped "Wm. A. Pond & Co. New York". Pond was a publishing house in the 1800's who published some of Stephen Foster's work.
Very good mechanical shape, scuffing and wear typical for a vintage banjo. Fingerboard was ruined, so I salvaged the inlays, removed the old frets and wood, and put on two layers of ebony veneer, which appears to be similar thickness to the original fingerboard.
I left the banjo as a fretless, and the fret slots are still just visible, in case someone wants it fretted to the same scale length.
Scale length = 24 1/4". Action is about 1/4" at the octave. The bridge is a funky, salvaged vintage home-made bridge, about 1/2", The action can readily be lowered by using a shorter bridge.
Nylgut Minstrel strings, Yellowstone banjo head. Violin-type pegs. I replaced all 5 pegs w/ new rosewood pegs.
Pot is 9 5/8" and snugs to the heel using a wedge through the dowel. With the small pot and short scale length, this may have been a "Ladies" banjo. Tone ring is rolled-over cladding construction.
The finish on the neck is very nice. The metal on the pot is extensively tarnished. I cleaned off the dirt and left the tarnish intact. It appears that much of the nickel plate on the pot is gone, and the heavy tarnish is on the brass.
FLAWS:
Was originally fretted. I removed the ruined fingerboard and repaired as stated above. The repairs turned out well, but the fretless conditionh is not original. I spaced the inlays so that the original fret spacing can be used if someone wants to fret the banjo.
Uses violin-type pegs ....not really a flaw, but takes some getting used to if you've never used them. These are less precise than geared tuners, and take more attention than geared tuners. The banjo stays in tune.
Pot is pretty extensively tarnished. Pot uses 20 shoes and hooks. The shoes are the "L" type. Two original shoes were missing, and I had no "L" shoes to use as replacements, so I put on hex shoes. The hex shoes are near the tailpiece and aren't too noticeable.
The peghead is mottled. It looks as though the peghead may have been veneered with a dyed wood which has lost some of the dye. The finish is pretty good on the peghead, though.
ON THE PLUS SIDE:
Very nice, bright tone and very good volume. Good playability. A nice, small, light fretless. Buckbee produced a lot of banjos, and some say that Buckbee was the best of the mass-produced banjos from the late 1800's. Buckbee also made banjos for Dobson and others. "Pond"-stamped banjos are not common.
BEFORE:
