not to be smug, but
Jan. 19th, 2020 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2TGyWJE
So, I have this banjo. It is a beautiful Gretsch bluegrass resonator banjo, with lots of mother-of-pearl, and a very heavy, bell-brass tone ring around the inside of the head. It weighs at least fifteen pounds. It is substantial.
I bought a strap for it rather hastily, since it didn’t come with one. I bought a decent brand, Op-Tech, because I was familiar with them– we were a dealer of their camera straps for years, at my dayjob, so I knew what kind of materials and padding I could expect, and I was not disappointed. It was a good, very plain, heavy-duty strap.
I sort of didn’t like it, though. Firstly because it wasn’t adjustable *quite* short enough. Secondly because the way it attached meant it frequently twisted, and the padding made it very uncomfortable when twisted. But due to the banjo being both very heavy, and very smooth, it was nearly impossible to get it settled.
But I figured I’d just live with it; a cheap strap is $30, and the nice leather cradle straps were like… $50 minimum, I wasn’t going to do it.
Well… Dude bought himself one of the nice leather cradle straps, which is fine, it’s his prerogative, he has a lot more money than I do. (We share all our money but I’m always aware that he earns more than four times as much as I do, so I try not to frivolously spend more than I can easily justify as being mine.)
He does *not* have a resonator banjo. He has a hollow-back banjo. This brand of cradle strap– the nicest, if plainest– doesn’t fit Deering hollow-back banjos; there’s not enough clearance in the pins that secure the head in place to allow the strap to pass through.
So I just scored myself a beautiful buffalo-leather cradle strap which I never would have bought myself, and discovered that yes, indeed, it fits beautifully, does a far better job of holding my banjo, and is more comfortable all around than the padded nylon one.
And as an additional bonus, Dude has been laser-focusing on learning The Mermaid so that he can do all the complicated fingerpicking and I can just do chop backup chords so I can focus on singing, which is fucking perfect, because I love to sing that song and am worried about being able to be coordinated enough to sing while playing.
(Not that we’re performing it per se, but I want to play it for my BFF and her kids and it’d be better if we could make it all the way through!)
I’ve also just realized there’s one more week until we’re seeing them than I thought, so maybe there’s enough time to master this one and pick up a second. That would be so fun!
So, I have this banjo. It is a beautiful Gretsch bluegrass resonator banjo, with lots of mother-of-pearl, and a very heavy, bell-brass tone ring around the inside of the head. It weighs at least fifteen pounds. It is substantial.
I bought a strap for it rather hastily, since it didn’t come with one. I bought a decent brand, Op-Tech, because I was familiar with them– we were a dealer of their camera straps for years, at my dayjob, so I knew what kind of materials and padding I could expect, and I was not disappointed. It was a good, very plain, heavy-duty strap.
I sort of didn’t like it, though. Firstly because it wasn’t adjustable *quite* short enough. Secondly because the way it attached meant it frequently twisted, and the padding made it very uncomfortable when twisted. But due to the banjo being both very heavy, and very smooth, it was nearly impossible to get it settled.
But I figured I’d just live with it; a cheap strap is $30, and the nice leather cradle straps were like… $50 minimum, I wasn’t going to do it.
Well… Dude bought himself one of the nice leather cradle straps, which is fine, it’s his prerogative, he has a lot more money than I do. (We share all our money but I’m always aware that he earns more than four times as much as I do, so I try not to frivolously spend more than I can easily justify as being mine.)
He does *not* have a resonator banjo. He has a hollow-back banjo. This brand of cradle strap– the nicest, if plainest– doesn’t fit Deering hollow-back banjos; there’s not enough clearance in the pins that secure the head in place to allow the strap to pass through.
So I just scored myself a beautiful buffalo-leather cradle strap which I never would have bought myself, and discovered that yes, indeed, it fits beautifully, does a far better job of holding my banjo, and is more comfortable all around than the padded nylon one.
And as an additional bonus, Dude has been laser-focusing on learning The Mermaid so that he can do all the complicated fingerpicking and I can just do chop backup chords so I can focus on singing, which is fucking perfect, because I love to sing that song and am worried about being able to be coordinated enough to sing while playing.
(Not that we’re performing it per se, but I want to play it for my BFF and her kids and it’d be better if we could make it all the way through!)
I’ve also just realized there’s one more week until we’re seeing them than I thought, so maybe there’s enough time to master this one and pick up a second. That would be so fun!
