Disassembly: part one of 3

One of three is pretty much a guess. It might be one of four. But that aside, today, I did the disassembly!

Here she is. In all her glory! Strangely, she still dont have a name. So If there actually are readers out there, I encourage a name contest for her. Granted, some of my other stringed instruments dont have female names. My electric guitar is named Reynaldo but dont sweat it. If you feel a guy's name is more appropriate for a banjo, go right ahead.

So this is it. Before any disassembly, i'm going to play her one last time. And I barely pick out Linger awhile one last time before the replacement parts arrive.

So after that, I started with unscrewing the resonator off. One disapointment about this banjo is that the resonator has to be screwed on. And also, the lack of a flange is annoying.

Here's a better view of the back as I'm unscrewing it. Pretty nice resonator though. It's one of the reasons why I bought this one.

The Back comes off with a little work and reveals a single coordinator rod system. (See previous post for info on that)

So that's how to take it off. For the remaining time, the back will stay off until new parts arrive as well as my oval head screws. I have yet to find those.

Not exactly sure how to begin, I begin with removing the strings one at a time. At first work is slow, but after awhile, my hand hurts since these things suck at doing their intended job, keeping the strings in tune.

Realizing the potential of efficiency I pulled out my trusty string winder and when I undid these strings, the last person obviously did not know how to put strings on. Apparently, it seems like it was just stuck in and he started to turn the pegs.

So all the strings are gone. or at least they seem like that in this photo.

Now came the task of removing the strings from their respective slots. Not quite the easy task, but I manage somehow. Since these strings are kinda ancient, they've rusted a little in their feed slots so I have to work them out little by little. To you stringed instrument players, you probably know the annoyance of the ends of your strings being all curly and incapable of fitting through the small holes where strings feed through. I found a pretty easy solution which I had wished I thought of many years ago. Just cut off the offending curly part.

So there she is without strings. Clean, quick and dirty. There's no going back now. My strings were thrown out in the trash already and today is trash day and they're gone.

View of the neck side. without strings. It feels alot nicer without strings. At first, I thought they frets were rather blocky but with those junk strings off, they're rather smooth, but could probably do with a little bit of shaping.


So here ends the labour I have gone through so far. There I sit, removing the tuners from the headstock. I made the mistake of removing the gear then the whole unit. The whole thing comes out as one, and that one move was an unnecessary waste of time. But check my next post for part two.