7 or 8 years ago, my grandfather gave me an antique Sears-mail-order “Ragtime King” banjo that had been in our family since the 1910’s. After decades of use, the fretboard was gnarled and pitted in a few common chord positions of its native G tuning. Each tuner was different, being seized from various other instruments, and requiring different screws (or in one case, physical alteration by means of a bolt cutter) to be functionally mounted onto the headstock. I repaired it somewhat shoddily (in the apparent tradition of my ancestors) to a playable state, and was hooked. I took it as a sign, and a few years later, painstakingly handcrafted a banjo over the course of 4 months that I believe to be of greater quality than an instrument I could reasonably afford. ‘Cause that’s what America is all about.
