Old banjo info/advice age ?

hi

i bought this for £10 from an antique shop, seemed very reasonable

gonna get some strings and a bridge, and see what it sounds like, will probably sell if sound is bad

anyone know much about banjos, age,origin, type of wood,clean up advice etc

has a hand painted resonator back

thank you

 

@all_fakes can probably tell you more.

 

About all I can say: it is a 4-string banjo; you don't give dimensions, but with 4 strings it is either a tenor banjo, which would be at least 24" or more, likely close to 29"; if much smaller it could be a banjo-uke or ukulele-banjo, at around 18"
The slotted headpiece indicates it likely was made in England, or possibly somewhere else in Europe, but you don't see that on American instruments.
Date is likely somewhere around 1900-1920.
Looks like a fair bit of tarnish, and probably not much you can do about the metal parts without taking it apart.
I'd put some furniture polish, guitar polish or such on the wood parts, keeping it off the head. And avoid the painted flowers also. A lot of those designs were decals, but furniture polish is not good for them whether painted or decal.

 

thanks for the info, its 30" so tenor banjo i guess

 

Yes. standard tenor tuning is in fifths, C-G-D-A, like a viola; Irish players use that, or tune it lower, to G-D-A-E like an octave mandolin. Most tenor banjos are too short to sound good in the Irish tuning, but it varies; that's the tuning I generally use, and it sounds OK on one of my tenors, but not on the other.
Some players like it tuned as the top 4 strings of a guitar, D-G-B-E

 

thanks, will probably play around, see what sounds best

im thinking of painting the head with some artwork or some thing, will probably dampen the sound, but looks horrible as is

all depends on what is sounds like when strung