The 5-String Banjo in North Carolina by C.P. Heaton

By C.P. Heaton

North Carolina is banjo country. No other area has done more to nurture and preserve banjo traditions; no other area has had greater influence on banjo innovations. The colorful history of America’s favorite folk instrument is very nearly synonymous with the history of banjoists and the banjo in the Tar Heel state.

The American banjo is of diverse ancestry. Stringed instruments with skin heads and wooden shells are known to have existed nearly 4500 years ago in Egypt. Similar instruments have been used for hundreds of years in India, Burma, Siam, Arabia, Tibet, and the Celebes. 1

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Appalachian Tradition Music, A Short History by Debby McClatchy

MOST Europeans consider the Appalachians to be mountains of the southeastern region of the United States, but in truth they encompass eighteen states, reaching from Maine to Georgia, and include, among others, the Berkshires of Connecticut, the Green Mountains of New Hampshire, the Catskills of New York, the Blue Ridge of Virginia, and the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Southern Appalachia includes three hundred counties covering most of West Virginia and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Virginia, an area called today the Southern Highlands or Upland South, or, in Colonial times, the ‘Back Country’.

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Music of the Southern Appalachians by Mike Seeger

This area is to the west of the flat tidewater and piedmont areas of the Atlantic coastline and includes some broad valleys with good agricultural land, such as the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, as well as many smaller valleys, some just wide enough for a little bottomland next to a creek. The eastern mountains are not nearly as tall as the Rockies; they generally rise 1,000 to 3,000 feet with a maximum of 6,000 feet, and are forested with a variety of deciduous and evergreen trees and many smaller bushes and flowers. Some mountains are green, rolling hills, but in

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Buying a Used Guitar

By Bob Smakula

First, play the guitar. Is there excessive buzzing? Is it too easy to play or do you need hydraulic-assisted fingers? String height is determined by several factors. Nut height, saddle height, neck curvature and neck angle all make one guitar’s action better or worse than another’s. String height can be changed to suit any playing style. My opinion of ideal string height for a steel string guitar (measured from the top of the fret to the bottom of the string at the 12th fret) is 1/16″ at the high E gradually increasing to 3/32″ at the low

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Cracks by Bob Smakula

Winter is the time of year my crack repair business booms. Outdoors the humidity is below 35% . Inside, heating systems dry the air out even more, creating a dangerous environment for delicate musical instruments. There are two things I do to keep humidity a little bit higher during the winter months. In my workshop, where there are likely to be twenty instruments being repaired at any given time, I keep a humidifier going constantly. The brand I use and really like is Bionaire Clean Mist. They are available at most discount department and home center stores.

The instruments I

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Rosin by Bob Smakula

Rosin is made from the sap of pine trees. Live trees are wounded, and the sap is collected for processing. The larch conifer is used most often for violin rosin, but only a small portion of all collected pine sap finds it way to the musical world.

Most rosin in its basic form is similar. Manufacturers add compounds to tweak rosin for particular fiddlers’ needs. Dark rosin has tar added to make it softer, which makes the rosin stickier and suitable for colder climates. A small amount of beeswax is sometimes added to help lessen the harmonic squeak caused by

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Truss Rods by Bob Smakula

I’ve recently been reading many newspaper and magazine articles on the greatest inventions of the last 98 years. You tend to see the same things over and over: air travel, nylon, transistors, and even Little Debbie Nutty Bars. My personal favorite is one that few people ever see, though most guitar, banjo, and mandolin players rely on it to keep their instruments in shape. This hidden treasure-the truss rod-has saved me countless hours of neck adjustments.

The earliest manufactured guitars were intended to be played with gut strings and neck reinforcement was a minor. As players demanded louder instruments, steel

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Fitting Fiddle Pegs by Bob Smackula

Several doctors I know hate to go to parties. They know that sooner or later someone is going to come up to them, describe an ache or pain and demand an immediate diagnosis. Well, this phenomenon happens to instrument repair people too. I’m always asked to find a buzz or do a quickie repair at our local tunes sessions. The thing is, I don’t mind.

While we were jamming a few months ago, a local old-time fiddler complained to me that her fiddle was hard to tune. I gave it the hands-on test and decided she was right. A quick

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Repairing Your Instrument Case by Bob Smackula

Yes, I was watching TV. A return of an animal show that we all watched as kids only because Walt Disney was on after it. Jim was wrestling with a giant anaconda while Marlin watched from a helicopter. I was wrestling with a decision on this Old-Time Herald’s instrument topic. Then it hit me – insurance.

What is the best insurance for your herringbone guitar, Tubaphone banjo, or Sears and Roebuck Strad copy fiddle? It is not necessarily a rider on your home owners policy. In fact, it is the case the instrument is stored in when you’re not playing.

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D-18, D-28 … What it All Means

By Bob Smakula

You walk into a music store to check out the latest in six string guitars that might be suitable for old-time music. You overhear the salesman talking to another customer and they seem to be talking in some cryptic code: “D-35, triple 0-18, M-36, D-28s.” Should you yell “Bingo!?” No, they are talking about different Martin guitar models.

Deciphering the Martin guitar code is simple. The model designations can be broken down into two parts. Take D-28, or 5-18 for example. The letter prefix “D” or number prefix “5” represents the guitar’s size. The suffix “28” or

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