Ever since I saw Foggy Mountain Spaceship on YouTube, I’ve been thinking about getting a banjo bass, not like the one above, that’d be too beaucoup. These guys are great; inspiring! Maybe I can make my own banjo bass (Or is it bass banjo?) out of a snare drum and a bass guitar neck.
This snare might do nicely. I even asked my drummer friend and all around talented bloke Sean what he thought and he thinks it might work too. Sean has done a lot of building, houses, outdoor projects, you name it, the guy can build it and I value his opinion. Anyhew, as for a neck, if I can get a 32″ scale bass neck, that might be cool, otherwise we go into too beaucoup territory again. Banjo-style tuners would be a nice touch.
2/1/26
I’ve got all the pieces here: piccolo snare drum (from the link above) & 4 string banjo bridge. I already had the 30″ scale neck, bass tuners, wood for the heel, threaded rod for the coordinator rod, tape wound bass strings, piezo pickups.
One thing I have been wondering about is the headstock/peghead shape. Maybe a nod to a traditional banjo peghead would be cool. The minstrel headstock would be really cool, eh? But I may go with J5 since the that one has straighter string pulls and the E and D tuners are wider on the peghead than the other 2. Ooh, a reverse minstrel. I do love reversed headstocks!
2/3/26
I got it put together yesterday. There’s good and bad. In building this thing, I’m trying to refrain from punching new holes into the side of the drum–that’s my goal anyway.
- First the bridge is too narrow, its notch spacing is for a tenor banjo which is a more narrow neck than my bass VI neck so I’ll have to figure something out. Maybe getting a 5 string bridge with no notches carved in it will do the trick. (update, I can’t find any unnotched ones!)
- My acoustic bass guitar tailpiece doesn’t really work, I temporarily mounted it to the side of the snare (or do I call it a pot like a real banjoleer? Wait, is banjoleer their preferred term?) but it was too close to the pot (eh, eh?) rim and I could barely get the strings in the tailpiece when I was stringing it up. I thought it might clamp onto the side of the rim but the bridge is set so far back in the pot away from the neck, there’s not enough room.
- Right now the strings are pulling the whole neck up and the action is crazy high. I’ll have to employ a neck tilt adjustment, which is much different than what a truss rod does. A truss rod alters the shape of the neck by bending the neck wood toward the strings or away from them providing relief in the neck–back bow or forward bow. A neck tilt adjustment pivots the neck from the body joint so compensate for string tension, the neck stays straight, not bowed like with a truss rod adjustment. (see figure A below)
- Speaking of stability, I’d like to add some reinforcement to the inside of the pot where the neck attaches and on the opposite side at the heel block where the tailpiece will attach. Most banjos have either a dowel or a threaded rod that can cinch the neck into the pot and that goes through the middle of the pot from the neck to the tailpiece side. If I shore up either side of the pot with some thick wood and attach the threaded rod to it with a coupling nut, I think that will work.
- To attach the neck to the pot, I’ll need some kind of neck heel that attaches to the neck and then attaches to the side of the pot with screws on the inside. That will most likely have the screw in it for adjusting the neck angle. I think using wood insert nuts so there will be good contact and I won’t worry about the screw getting stripped in a plain wood hole. The neck will need to be glued to the heel, otherwise that’s too many screws zig zagging through that small piece of wood.
- And of course there’s the headstock shape. Maybe something cool like a reverse minstrel. I’ll have to mock something up. (Edit: I don’t think a minstrel headstock will work unless I use banjo tuners and I think bass guitar strings wouldn’t fit through the tuner shaft holes)
2-4-26
I watched some videos and read up on banjo tailpieces. Once YouTuber suggested using a bridge that didn’t make contact with the head. Since I’m trying to use existing holes and hardware as much as I can, I made a simple metal tailpiece that screws into the snare drum wires attachment bracket. As a bass and guitar player, I appreciate bridges that have an easy way to insert and remove string ball ends, so I tried my hand at making holes big enough for the bass string ball ends to fit through and a slot for the strings to rest in. I will probably sand the tailpiece down to bare metal, polish it up and clear coat it.
Yes, that bridge is temporary. I had a scrap piece of rubber and that was a good way to increase the height of it along with the screw but as I mentioned before, the string spacing is too narrow. I’m going to 3D print one so I can find a good string width. I’m sure real banjo players will not like that. 😀 Speaking of 3D printing, I may print one of these too!