Mountain Banjo Model 5 String Fretless Banjo (unlabelled), c. 1970s, made in Watauga County, North Carolina, natural finish, cherry neck, cherry body with skin head.
Here is an unmarked offering from the Watauga County region, something of a cradle of Americana, bluegrass, and old time music and many important folk luthiers such as the Glenns and Stanley Hicks. This is a workable and pretty competently made but still a bit primitive example of a mountain banjo as made famous by players such as Frank Proffitt. While we cannot directly attribute this instrument to any notable builder, it does share some aesthetic characteristics with Stanley Hicks though the buildmanship is more amateur in some places than what Stanley was capable of by the 1970s. Perhaps a young apprentice or fan in the area; unlikely but not impossible it could have just been a cruder of his builds.
The simple but ingenious design of these banjos is far closer to original African-style instruments built in the southern States by enslaved African-Americans than it is to the intricately factory engraved, complex and pearlescent offerings of companies like Gibson and Bacon & Day which were usually financially unattainable to blue-collar pickers of rural Appalachia. This banjo is built with a subtly figured one-piece cherry neck with a smooth and easy playing C-shaped profile. The body has a cherry top, back sides and tailpiece and a genuine skin head. It is fretless with no markers on the fingerboard and a set of matching rosewood wooden friction pegs that are later replacements.
Overall length is 35 1/2 in. (90.2 cm.), 9 3/4 in. (24.8 cm.) width, and 2 in. (5.1 cm.) in depth, measured at side of rim.
This is a somewhat player grade example of a functional (but somewhat amateur) mountain banjo. The banjo is smattered with some dings and scratches from general playwear but is overall in solid shape. The neck is a thick, boxy square shape (almost as though fashioned from an existing leg of a piece of furniture) but it is still playable especially comfortable in the first position. A crack in the top has been patched and repaired stably.
The original skin head has been repaired; these are a bit laborious but not necessarily impossible to change on a mountain banjo. While we do not attribute this banjo to Hicks directly, this builder fortunately pulled one of Stanley's tricks by using flathead screws to hold the banjo together; this makes changing the skin considerably easier than many other mountain banjos.
The banjo plays well to the standards of these instruments provided one is comfortable navigating the admittedly quite chunky neck. With steel strings and hand-made friction pegs this banjo is not the easiest to tune, but rewards the effort with a beautiful and uniquely evocative sound. This banjo does not come with a bag or case. Very Good + Condition.
