Fixin' the Guitjo

I got this Deering 6 string Guitjo around year 2000. It was an impulse purchase after I sold my house in Santa Cruz and was changing gear around. I sold my old Stuart banjo, bought a Deering Goodtime, got a carbon fiber Bass and compact amp and put away the G&L bass which needed work, etc. This purchase was a bit outside of that rationale.

It is fun to thrash on; I particularly like playing Mexican Home by John Prine on it. But, I did not take it to Haiti with me cause it was so expensive. It would have been a hit there, but no one could have paid a reasonable price for it.

So it sat in the case for some years in Santa Cruz while we lived in Haiti, then it sat mostly in the case here in Trinidad in the little shack we live in under the redwoods. When I took it out in the spring of 2007 it was in bad shape. The strings had rusted into the plush lining of the case.

Something had to be done. Obviously. So, I completely disassembled it and cleaned it up. That is why we are here. Here is the neck lysing next to a Boston cast rim with the brackets on it. These brackets will be completely removed, the rim polished up, all pieces cleaned up and re-assembled with locktite on the threads of the thru bolts.

Here is the rim again, with the brackets attached; the little thingies which the resonator attaches to are sitting on the head in the other photo.

Lesse, here we have close ups of the re-assembly. With a little humour. Originally I put the brackets back on looking right. Then I looked again and realized that they needed to be upside down to do their job. That job being holding the thingies to hold the resonator on the back of the banjo. You can see some surplus locktite under one bracket after it has been rotated into the proper orientation.

And the beginning of the final assembly of the pot, rim, whatever you want to call it, then the re-attaching of the neck to the pot.

Fixin' the Guitjo

A division of Music within the Devoid page.