This is the standard description beginner model from Deering, sans tone ring, with a bit of a neck bow, but good sounding and a decent banjo to learn on if a person who likes to embrace pain wants to limit the purchase price. If you know a repairer (or a mad professor, or a small time dictator) with a heat-treating rack, this banjo deserves a few days (or weeks) in traction and then it will be a happy hamster. We should mention that there's a nickertoo on the back of the neck at the 7th fret. We sell an enormous number of these banjos - year after year. There is no better bargain in an American-made 5-string beginner banjo as this. Made near San Diego, CA, these are simple with their all natural maple finish and unpretentious appointments; it is light in weight and fully functional as a five-string. Peter Durand invented the can opener in 1863 but a Deering Good Time banjo is truly an eye opener.
We have decided that this banjo really should remain in Limbo, if not actual Purgatory, and so we have placed it in the same round hole in the ground in which actor Ted Levine held captive actor Brooke Smith in "Silence of the Lambskin Head." As they say in the banjo repair biz: "It rubs the lotion on its skin." If anybody who is hopelessly bored actually wants to have a personal project to take their mind away from the current economy, this banjo would make a good project. We were asking $369 at our Cash Discount Price because we like numbers in predictable sequences, but hey, if you have a number in mind please run it by us and we'll see if it "rings the bell." Thank you.